The Precarious Vision A Sociologist Looks At Social Fictions And Christian Faith

T.P.V.

$3-95

PETER L. BEKGEB

What an actor does on the stage is condi-
tioned by the role he is playing. In the
same way, what most people do and think
and what they think they can and can-
not do: their picture of the world is de-
termined by the limitations of the role
they play, whether it be that of an advertis-
ing man, an Episcopalian minister, a high
school teacher, a suburban wife, or what-
have-you.

THE PRECARIOUS VISION is a
highly original and uninhibited sociolo-
gist's look at i) this substantial element of
role-playing and fictitious ness in modem
society, 2) the Church's involvement in
these fictions, and 3) the way in which the
social scientist's perception of them clears
the ground for the apprehension of the
Christian faith. Parts i) and 2) are the
major part of the book and are illustrated
with lengthy fictional case-histories and
pieces cr sachcjfc'dcn,.

Peter L. Berger 1 tuS ratfei a highly
original, uninhibited piece cl \vork with a
wide appeal.

JACKET DESIGN BY HENRY WOLF

T.P.V.
$3.95

l^ETER L, BERGER

What an actor does on the stage is condi-
tioned by the role he is playing. In the
same way, what most people do and think
and what they think they can and can-
not do: their picture of the world is de-
termined by the limitations of the role
they play, whether it be that of an advertis-
ing man, an Episcopalian minister, a high
school teacher, a suburban wife, or what-
have-y ou .

THE PRECARIOUS VISION is a
highly original and uninhibited sociolo-
gist's look at i) this substantial element of
role-playing and fictitioiisness in modern
society, 2} ':Iia Church's involvement in
these fictions, and 3) the way in whict the
social scientist's perception of them clears
the ground for the apprehension of the
Christian faith. Parts i) and 2) are the
major part of the book and are illustrated
with lengthy fictional case-histories and
pieces of science-fiction.

Peter L. Berger has written a highly
original, uninhibited piece of work with a
wide appeal,

JACKET DESIGN BY HENRY WOLF

261.8

Berger

The precarious vision

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The Precarious Vision

PETER L. BERGER

The Precarious Vision

A Sociologist Looks at Social
Fictions and Christian Faith

DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC., GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK

1961

M of the characters in Chapters 2 and j of this book are
fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, tiving
or dead, is purely coincidental

libraiy of Congress Catalog Card Number 61-12495
Copyright 1961 by Peter L. Berger

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

CONTENTS

PART I BURDEN OF EGYPT

1. INTRODUCTION THE EXPERIENCE OF ALTERNATION 8
Society appears to most people as given. There are individual and group
experiences in which this givenness shows itself to be spurious. This
recognition of the precariousness of society is the necessary starting point
for authentic existence in society.

2. EXERCISES IN ALTERNATION 23

J, SOCIETY AS STAGE (SCHOIARLY REMARKS) 48

The social sciences present a picture of society as a structure of dramatic
fictions. These fictions determine human actions, but they also contain
the possibility of human freedom.

4. THE STAGE IS MADE OF CARDBOARD PAPER
(NONSCHOLARI/T REMARKS) 67

The perception of society as dramatic fiction may be shocking at first,
Further reflection about it reveals the deeply comic aspect of social exist-
ence. There is a liberating quality to this revelation.

5. FICTION AND AUD8I 85

To take the fictions as reality can become a moral alibi. It then becomes
possible to avoid responsibility for one's actions. To live in unperceived
fictions is morally dangerous because it leads to inauthenticity.

PART II BURDEN OF ZION

6. RELIGION AND THE SOCIAL FICTIONS ^ 102

Religion as a social institution tends to give an illusion of certainty to the
dramatic fictions. For this reason, religion as a social institution is morally
dangerous. Religion can become the supreme fiction that sanctifies all
the other fictions.

7. REOGIOUS EXERCISES 127

8. ANTIRKLIGIOITS CRITIQUE 146

The antireligious critique serves to unmask the inauthenticity of the
religious rationalization. Atheism ox agnosticism may be steps into freedom.

3. ?T uyoooJ-d

6 CONTENTS

PART III EXODUS

9. CHRISTAN FAITH AND THE CRITIQUE OF RELIGION 162

The Christian faith is not religion in the sense of our analysis. The
Christian faith is closer to the antireligious critique than to religion.
In fact, the Christian faith provides a radical antireligious critique of its
own.

10. CHRISTIAN FAITH AND BAD FAITH l86

The Christian faith radically debunks the social fictions. The Christian
faith is thus related to social perception. Christian ethics is irrelevant
unless it sees through the fictitiousness of social structure.

11. CHRISTIAN FAITH AND THE SOCIAL COMEDY 209

The Christian faith, because it views the world under the aspect of
redemption, reveals society under the aspect of comedy. The Christian
faith relates to men stripped of their social roles. Christian ethics human-
izes the social comedy and frees men from the bondage of deadly
earnestness.

12. "YOU ARE THE MAN** 219

An exegetical postscript

NOTHES

230

PART ONE
Burden of Egypt

INTRODUCTION
1. The Experience of Alternation

SOCIETY APPEARS TO MOST PEOPLE AS GIVEN, THERE ARE IN-
EHVEDUAL AND GROUP EXPERIENCES IN WHICH THIS GIVENNESS
SHOWS ITSELF TO BE SPURIOUS. THIS RECOGNITION OF THE
PRECARIOUSNESS OF SOCIETY IS THE NECESSARY STARTING POINT
FOR AUTHENTIC EXISTENCE IN SOCIETY*

Can a truly contemporary person be a Christian?
In America, where religion is still an integral part of the
social order, this question may strike many as an odd one,
They are likely to answer with the words "Of course!" very
much in the sense in which the Lynds analyzed "of course"
statements in the famous Middletown studies statements
which reflect the common, taken-for-granted convictions of a
society, statements which one doubts only at the risk of ques-
tioning the very foundations of the social order. In Europe,
where the disintegration of religion and society has gone much
further, the question will seem odd to far fewer people. Both
religious and nonreligious people have been moved to ask this
question, though different answers may be given to it. There
are even wide segments of the population, such as the working
classes and the intelligentsia of some European countries, in
which the question is likely to be answered with the words
"Of course notr Leaving aside the way in which this question
appears to the vast world on the other side of the Iron Curtain,
it is very likely that even in the so-called uncommitted soci-
eties only few thinking people would respond with a positive
and axiomatic "Of course." At the very least, the question
will be regarded as pointing to a real problem.

This essay is written in the conviction that a positive
answer to the question is possible, though certainly not an

THE EXPERIENCE OF ALTERNATION g

answer that could be prefaced with the words "Of comse."
Furthermore, the writer feels that such a positive answer can
only be given with intellectual integrity when the fuU weight
of iiiejproblem /behind the question is perceived. ' w "~~ "~~

TTie reader of this essay is being invited to follow an argu-
ment that may seem bizarre in places and the outcome of
which may only appear clearly at its conclusion. For this
reason it may be well to begin with a brief preview of the
entire argument and with a few comments on its character*

This essay is not a scientific work, although in places (es-
pecially in Chapters 3 and 6) reference will be made to
materials from the social sciences. At the same time, the fact
that the writer is a sociologist will be apparent in many places
in the argument. Nor is this just a matter of personal bias.
If the social sciences in general and sociology in particular
have any value at all to the general reader, it lies in the extent
to which they are able to illuminate the contemporary situa-
tion and his existence within it. Two chapters of the essay
(Chapters 2 and 7) are in irhe nature of bettes-Zettres. They
fit into the argument as "exercises/' to serve as iHustrations
and to make an appeal to the imagination, especially to the
latter's ironic dimensions. The reader who dislikes irony may
skip them without losing the thread of the argument, thougli
we would contend that the ironic perspective often makes the
truth stand out more sharply than the unruffled operations of
intellectual analysis.

The first part of the essay will seek to outline a certain
perspective on society which the writer feels to be especially
characteristic of the social-scientific enterprise, although other
avenues of experience and thought can lead to it. What char-
acterizes this perspective more than anything else is the man-
ner in which it transforms a world which we are taught to
take for granted into one that is very questionable indeed.
It is this perspective which we refer to in the title of the essay
as "the precarious vision/' At the conclusion of the first part
we shall ask what the ethical implications of this perspective
are. The second part of the essay will try to show the way in

10 THE PRECAMOTJS VISION

which the religious phenomenon appears in this perspective.
Both first and second parts together constitute the description
of the problem that lies concealed behind our opening ques-
tion "Can a truly contemporary person be a Christian?? In
the third part of the essay we shall try to show how a positive
answer to the question may be given from the viewpoint of
the Christian faith and without brushing aside the problem
as Christians often do. It goes without saying that such an
argument cannot be convincing in the way a scientific hypoth-
esis is verified. It must contain both cogito and credo. It
cannot be validated step by step, or given the weight of
authority by footnotes. It will be necessary in places to indi-
cate and allude, to send out signals in the hope that there are
those ready to understand them. If such an enterprise carries
an element of risk in a way that no purely scientific (or, for
that matter, purely theological) argumentation does, it is a
risk that the writer is willing to take. At least in part such risk
is inherent in any attempt to communicate in matters of faith.
Now that the reader has an idea of where this argument will
take him, it may be in order to take a closer look at its begin-
ning point, a point from which the argument starts and to
which it will have to return a number of times. This point lies
in the experience in which a new perspective on society is
acquired. Needless to say, such an experience need not be a
unique or instantaneous one. It may stretch over a long period
of time, although for some it may come in a sudden flash of
^recognition. We call this experience that of alternation. It is
an experience that leads to a very specific fonSTSF75flfigfcious-
ness, particularly a certain consciousness of existence in so-
ciety. Perhaps the most characteristic feature of this conscious-
ness is OTjwe^^

^^ten^^This sense is achieved in most cases by an experi-
ence or a series of experiences revealing society to be some-
thing radically different from what had previously been taken
for granted. For most of us, as we grow up and learn to live in
society, its forms take on the appearance of structures as self-
evident and as solid as those of the natural cosmos. Very likely

THE EXPERIENCE OF ALTERNATION" 11

society could not exist otherwise. Nor is it likely that sociali-
zation could take place if this were not the case. Yet this
consciousness of what Alfred Schuete has called the "world
taken for granted" is not of such solidity that it cannot be
breached. When such a breach occurs the world is trans-
formed, takes on new dimensions and colors. If the breach
occurs suddenly it marks the day after which life will never
be the same again. ^

For those who have experienced wartime bombings a pic-
ture suggests itself here. A street. The street is familiar. We
have walked through it often. We know each house. Then one
night the street radically changes its appearance. The house
which we knew so well from the outside, whose balconies and
portico we had often admired 7 is suddenly cut in two* For the
first time we can look inside. We see the rooms and corridors
that had previously been hidden from our eyes. The facade is
gone. The secrets of bedrooms, cabinets, and backstage stair-
cases disgorge themselves into public view. This street will
never be the same for us. Even if the rubble is removed, the
ruins rebuilt, we remain conscious that the facades which now
meet our eyes again are fust that We know of the hidden
reality behind the fagadesL The breach in the taken-for-
granted consciousness of society is very much like this picture.
What we had previously taken for structures of steel now
appears as the facade of a paper house. Life being what it is, we
may continue to act as if the fagade were all of reality. Our
minds being what they are, we may even forget what hap-
pened, shut it away in those dark corners where catastrophes
and terrors are stored. All the same, our innocence will have
been lost^The memory of what we have understood will
remain to haunt us and, given certain circumstances, will
burst forth once more and transform our world/

There is an entire generation in Europe whose awareness of
society is marked by this experience. It separates them from
both their elders, who have more easily Dipped back into
older ways of looking at the world, and from the new genera-
tion again growing up in a society which seems intact/ The

12 THE PKECASHOUS VISION

generation of young Germans who fought in World War II is
a good example of this/The rapid economic recovery of west-
ern Germany has led to a strange isolation of the conscious-
ness which marked the formative years of this generation.
To their elders (not considering those who were committed
Nazis themselves) the period of totalitarianism, war, and
hunger often appears now as an interlude to be remembered,
if at all, as an interruption in the normal functioning of
society as it ought to be. The new generation growing up amid
the glittering reconstruction of the German "economic mira-
cle" finds it difficult even to imagine this period, let alone to
consider its insights significant for their own view of the
world. There remains the consciousness of those for whom
the world of ruins (bath physical and cultural) opened up a
new understanding of the precariousness of all social existence.
It is possible that similar forms of consciousness are to be
found in those who are living through their formative years in
countries of rapid social change, of revolutionary political and
economic transformations.

In America, where the fagades of society have never been
subjected to a comparable shock, there are different avenues
leading to this consciousness. We can locate this consciousness
without much difficulty in contemporary American literature,
especially those tendencies within it that express a deliberate
disaffiliation from American society. As was probably the case
in different periods of history, this consciousness of the
precariousness of social reality is to be found especially among
underprivileged and ostracized groups of the population. In
the American case one might point to the perspective of the
Negro, to the worlds of prostitution or homosexuality, or to
that peculiarly American ethos of the hobo that for one
historic moment reached political articulateness in the violent
episode of the I.W1W. In all such cases we are confronted
by perspectives which challenge the taken-for-granted view
of society,, which point up the contradictions and artificialities
of what those who e *belong n regard as normalcy.

In the experience of the writer this consciousness has fre-

THE EXPERIENCE OF ALTERNATION 13

quentiy been detected among those engaged in the social
sciences. In speaking of what he calls "the sociological imagi-
nation/ 7 C. Wright Mills has described this consciousness as
follows:

"The first frait of this imagination and the first lesson of the
social science that embodies it is the idea that the individual can
understand his own experience and gauge his own fate only by
locating himself within his period, that he can know his own
chances in life only by becoming aware of those of all individuals
in his circumstances. In many ways it is a terrible lesson; in
many ways a magnificent one. We do not know the limits of
man's capacities for supreme effort or willing degradation, for
agony or glee, for pleasurable brutality or the sweetness of reason.
But in our time we have come to know that the limits of *human
nature 7 are frighteningly broad/' 1

It is significant that the chapter from which this quotation
is taken has the heading "The Promise" and that the bulk
of Mills's book is a sharp criticism of contemporary American
sociology. It is certainly not contended here that all American
social scientists share the sense of precariousness being dis-
cussed. Indeed, the social sciences have become so much part
of the intellectual scene taken for granted that sometimes the
sociological enterprise itself can become for an individual
an excellent method of avoiding any existential encounter
with the social reality within which he is located. He may
then segregate his insights into that reality very carefully
within the confines of his professional role and live the rest of
his life fairly much like the other organization men on his
block a bizarre and instructive form of bad faith, indeed!
Nevertheless, within a society that continues to appear intact
the "sociological imagination" provides Americans with a per-
spective which in Europe has been the outcome of massive
social disintegration. It is the excitement of this which re-
peatedly breaks through the institutionalized dreariness of pro-
fessional social science and, incidentally, is capable of captur-
ing the imagination of students as an invitation to intellectual
adventure.

14 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

Anthropologists use the term "culture shock" to describe
the violent surprise occasioned by coming into contact with a
drastically alien way of life. The shock is not merely because
of what one sees in the alien culture. More importantly, the
shock comes from suddenly seeing oneself in a new way in
the mirror of the other culture. As Albert Salomon has
pointed out in discussing Montesquieu's Persian Letters, the
startled question of the Parisians looking at the strangers in
their midst "How can one be a Persian?" is really another
question "How can one be oneself?" The missionary who
goes to a foreign land and then finds his own convictions
tottering against the solid consensus of negation confronting
him experiences this question in its most searching dimen-
sions. But even the casual tourist, who finds to his surprise
and perhaps his delight that things can really be done in a way
very different from what he is accustomed to, experiences
a milder variety of the same shock. The degree to which this
experience has become diffused, and possibly diluted, as a
result of modem means of travel and communication is an
interesting sociological question that need not concern us here.
It is also possible that institutionalized travel, taken for
granted in wide circles, manages to neutralize the shock of
perceiving an alien culture in a very similar manner to the way
in which institutionalized social science neutralizes the shock
of perceiving one's own. What is of interest here is that the
pursuit of the "sociological imagination," especially as it leads
to a fresh encounter with the insights of the social sciences,
can lead to an experience very similar to the "culture shock"
of the anthropologists. The person who perceives another
culture in depth realizes that things can be very different from
what they are at home, which naturally leads him to the in-
sight that even at home they are not what they seem. The
person who perceives his own culture in depth reverses the
sequence- He sees that things are not what they seem, which
naturally leads to the conclusion that they might very well be
different In both cases what previously seemed to be iron
necessity now appears as the most precarious of conventions. 2

THE EXPERIENCE OF ALTERNATION 15

As was pointed out above, this sense of precariousness easily
becomes routinized and segregated in the consciousness of the
professional social scientist. To a degree this is probably in-
evitable. After all r one cannot live all the time with one's
mouth open. This is why teaching, and especially the oc-
casional teaching of introductory courses, is a salutary activity
for the professional social scientist In the reactions of students
to what he presents he can re-experience the freshness of the
"sociological imagination," sometimes even its liberating qual-
ity. The experiences of beginning students (needless to say, it
is the brighter students who are at issue here!) afford a good
illustration of the nature of the shock which the social sci-
ences are capable of administering.

There are, of course, a variety of shocks connected with
the recognition that social reality is not what one's high-
school civics classes led one to believe. There are specific
shocks as one looks into the phenomena of class, of power,
of the relativity of customs and morals. But perhaps the
greatest shock comes when one suddenly locates oneself
within the more or less disagreeable objectivities being stud-
ied. It is not only the shock of being located in a certain place
in society ("I come from a lower-middle-class background!")
but the shock of being located at all! One's own perspective
on the world, and that of one's family, which previously had
been unquestionably normative, are now seen as being located
in a specific way among innumerable perspectives, each one
normative within a certain group of people. One's chances
in life are seen to be overshadowed by forces over which one
has no control and never will have much. One's very private
life and convictions (say, one's sexual attitudes and behavior)
are seen to be crucially connected with this social location.
Such shock can be found quite easily among students in any
well-taught introductory course in sociology or anthropology.
How these students then deal with the shock (such as neu-
tralizing it effectively as being part of the game of acquiring
three elective credits in Soc. 100!) is another matter. Nor is
it necessary at the moment to go into the more complicated

l6 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

forms which this shock may take as the student goes on into
more advanced work in the social sciences, dealing with such
subjects as the Internalization of society in the formation of
personality, or the relationship of social structure and ideas as
elaborated in the sociology of knowledge, or the functional
analysis of belief systems. Even in a very elementary en-
counter with a social-scientific perspective there may occur,
even if only in flashes, the kind of transformation of con-
sciousness discussed above.

If the attempt is made to elucidate further the character
of this consciousness, one may find a rather paradoxical
phenomenon. On the one hand, the social-scientific perspec-
tive leads to an oppressive seaise of bondage. On the other
hand, it leads to the liberating feeling that the social world is
far more tenuous than had previously seemed to be the case.
This paradox is only a superficial one. The liberating feeling
comes from the valid insight that the social world is an
artificial universe, whose laws are conventions, rules of the
game that have been agreed upon but that can also be broken
and against which one can cheat. The sense of bondage comes
from the equally valid insight that society not only encom-
passes us about but penetrates within us, that we are ourselves
products and playthings of society, irrevocably social in our
innermost being. The one insight uncovers the fictitiousness
of society, the other its oppression. The fact that our bonds
are frequently spun from illusions only rarely lessens our
bondage. The knowledge of the Negro that race does not
exist in the meaning of his oppressors does not free him
from their oppression. The knowledge of the ugly girl that
standards of beauty are culturally relative does not brighten
the loneliness of Saturday night. Taking together the insights
into the fictitiousness and into the oppression of society, we
arrive at a very specific sense of precariousness. Which is the
point of these remarks.

It should be obvious that such a sense of precariousness
must also extend to the inner convictions, as these convic-
tions are perceived to be related to social situations and their

THE EXPERIENCE OF ALTERNATION 17

relativity. It is not necessary at the moment to go into the
psychological uncertainty that underlies statements beginning
with the remark "I may be rationalizing, but . . " It is quite
sufficient to consider the uncertainty about the social location
of one's convictions that marks a statement opening with a
disclaimer like "I may be a Southern Baptist, but . /* What
is involved here is not just uncertainty and doubt about the
legitimacy of one views, but the curious ability to look
around the corners of one's own Weltanschauung, the ability
to imagine oneself holding quite a different position. One
knows that one thinks as a Southerner and as a Baptist By
implication one can then imagine oneself as an emancipated
cosmopolitan and as a Catholic. What is more, it then be-
comes possible to change oneself into the imagined figure.
Very logically, then, the sense of precariousness makes for a
proneness to conversion, meaning by this generally the in-
tellectual and existential jump from one Weltanschauung to
another. Thus the Southern Baptist may go North and become
a leftwing radical, and the radical may become a Catholic,
and the Catholic gets himself psychoanalyzed and loses his
faith. What is involved here is a more general, perhaps more
diluted version of what Kierkegaard meant by the "leap/*
that one great jump from unbelief into faith. This general
proneness to be uncertain of one's position and to be ready
to change it may be called alternation. It goes without saying
that the very awareness of alternation in this sense may weH
lead to a great hesitancy to jump anywhere at all, that de-
termined skepticism which in postwar Germany has been
well caught in the phrase "ohne mich"

Arthur Koestler, in this instance discussing the alternation
between political commitment and the psychological aware-
ness of one's motives for this commitment, has provided us
with a vivid picture of this phenomenon:

"To-day I am going to fly off at a tangent from the twisted path.
I have not many illusions about the reasons why I am doing it,
nor about the cause which I serve. As children we used to be given

i8 THE PEECARIOUS VISION

a curious kind of puzzle to play with. It was a paper with a tangle
of very thin blue and red lines. If you fust looked at it you couldn't
make out anything. But if you covered it with a piece of trans-
parent red tissue-paper, the red lines of the drawing disappeared
and the blue lines formed a picture it was a clown in a circus
holding a hoop and a little dog jumping through it. And if you
covered the same drawing with a blue tissue-paper^ a roaring lion
appeared chasing the clown across the ring. You can do the same
thing with every mortal, living or dead. You can look at him
through Sonia's tissue-paper and write a biography of Napoleon
in terms of his pituitary gland as has been done: the fact that he
incidentally conquered Europe will appear as a mere symptom of
the activities of those two tiny lobes, the size of a pea. You can
explain the message of the Prophets as epileptical foam and the
Sistme Madonna as the projection of an incestuous dream. The
method is correct a:qd the picture in itself complete. But beware
of the arrogant error of believing that it is the only one. The
picture you get through the blue, tissue-paper will be no less
true and complete. The clown and the lion are both there, inter-
woven in the same pattern." 3

Instead of Koestier's tissue-paper another picture could be
taken, that of a stage with differently colored lights. A switch
is pulled and the entire stage is flooded with yellow light.
Another switch is pulled and the stage becomes purple,, so
much so that it seems inconceivable that it could ever have
been anything else. Yet one pull of the switch will bring back
the yellowness in all of its self-evident permanence. Moreover,
the apparatus of switches does not stand outside this alterna-
tion of different perspectives but is itself basked in the par-
ticular color that has been chosen. Each perspective seems
not only to include all of reality but to include within itself
all other possible perspectives and the passages from one to
the other. To put this in different terms, Catholicism has a
theory of psychoanalysis and a theory concerning what hap
pens when a Catholic becomes converted to psychoanalysis.
But psychoanalysis returns the compliment. There is a psycho-
analytic theory of Catholicism and of conversion to Catholi-
cism- And then there is a Marxist theory of both Catholicism
and psychoanalysis. And so on ad infinitum~and ad nauseam.

THE EXPERIENCE OF ALTERATION 1Q

The awareness of alternation and its existential possibilities
now becomes a sensation of vertigo. In the consciousness
delineated here this vertigo need not, of course, be constantly
present in actuality. But it always lurks in the background as a
possibility. Once the apparatus of switches has been perceived,
the stage never quite loses its precarious character. Somewhere,
even if just under the threshold of everyday thinking, remains
the memory of metamorphosis, of masks and cloaks, of the
artistry behind the settings of the stage*

We have been concerned in the last few pages with de-
lineating a specific form of consciousness of social reality. We
would like to leave aside the question, however fascinating,
as to the constituency of the group that may share it in our
own society or in other parts of the world. Also, we would
avoid becoming entangled in the equally intriguing question
as to whether such consciousness is a peculiar characteristic
of modern man. In other words, this essay in no way purports
to offer a "theory of modem man." This disclaimer is es-
pecially important in terms of relating this consciousness of
society to the religious phenomenon. We might then delve
into very interesting questions indeed. Does modern man
have a consciousness that sharply separates him from the
mentality of earlier times such as those out of which the
Biblical literature comes to us? Does this modem conscious-
ness involve a new and radical secularization of the world?
Are we confronted with a general secular mentality? Is it
likely to mark the future, at least of Western civilization? An
affirmative answer to these questions has led some people to
maintain that religion is a matter of the past, at least in its
traditional forms, or that we are now living at the beginning
of the "post-Christian era/* Such questions,, of course, are of
vital importance to the sociological interpretation of contem-
porary religion and contemporary culture in general. However,
we shall avoid burdening this essay with tiiem. The argument
we intend to follow wiU be significant for those ready to enter
into its premisses. The question as to how general this signifi-
cance is in terms of the modern world is beyond our scope.

2O THE PRECARIOUS VISION

We would only contend its strong significance for those to
whom the experience of alternation, in any of its forms, is a
central reality with which their existence (including their
religious commitments) must come to terms.

To possess (or 7 as one might almost be tempted to say, to
be afflicted with) this precarious vision of society does not in
itself lead to specific moral positions. The experience of alter-
nation can stand at the beginning of very different moral
paths rebellion or resignation, collaboration with the status
quo or resistance against it, the sad wisdom of the conservative
or the absolute aspirations of the revolutionary. However, we
would argue that the precarious vision enters decisively into
certain moral choices. This point will concern us particularly
in Chapter 5 of this essay. Suffice it to say at this moment that
the moral texture of a situation will vary as does one's per-
ception of it. The man who has perceived the precariousness
of racial categories may still choose to be a racist, but it will
be more difficult for him now to cloak his oppression by
reference to the nature of things. The man^wh^jcalizes the
grecaripm character of sexual .identities can continue to perse-
cgtejEhe homosexual, but it will be harder for him to do so
t|ian forgone who ^relieves that the Boy Scout ideal of virility
is grounded in the ontology of human existence. Or to take an
example to which we shall have occasion to return a number of
times, the man who has perceived the artificiality and ficti-
tiousness of social institutions will be less likely to be In favor
of capital punishment than one who believes naively in the
official morality. The issue of capital punishment is paradig-
matic in terms of the moral significance of the precarious
vision. Many facets of this consciousness come together in
the spectacle of an execution the fictitious character of social
reality, the hypocrisy of those who identify with the fictions,
the bad faith of what is taken for granted by the official
morality and the human agony which suffers torture and
death as part of the stage management. S&ratel^^
fictions murder. In these two statements we may find a
of the precarious vision. It is no wonder then that

THE EXPEBJEKCE OF ALTERNATION 21

this issue repeatedly finds those drawing together whose ex-
perience of alternation leads them to say that capital punish-
ment is beyond the limits of the morally possible* That this
point of view is not a peculiar eccentricity of the writer may
be seen by looking at just a few of its spokesmen Nicholas
Berdyaev, Albert Camus, Arthur Koestier not to mention
all those who saw in the execution of Caryl Chessman a
terrifying symbol of the tnature of American society.

If we have now given, as it were> a preview of the precarious
vision and its moral significance, we may also indicate in a
preliminary way how the religious phenomenon relates to our
^roblem. It is not by chance that religious people are more
kely to believe in society as it is taken for granted than those
rho have emancipated themselves from religion. As far as
be American situation is concerned, there would seem to be
ttle doubt about this assertion. Why should this be so? We
fould contend that in its social function religion appears
ver and over again as that which validates the carnival of
aasks* .Most importantly, religion tends always to deny the
fhenomenon of alternation. It will give the illusion of abso-
to one particular coloration of the social stage, .thus

^assuring and ^.latif^ngj^ jjndiyidual illusions of thejactprs.
[The most solemn rituals and superstitions ofjpQgjty receive
heir iiltimate^sanctigiQ fro^reHgion. TTie precarious identities
rfL actors^ cljitchi^j^ir^r^^ective _ masks, are pronounced
>y religionjto^be tibejhratib. Rel^on provides the ^legitimation
if powej^and the explanation of suffering. Religion isi thus
capable of jgrqyiding the mystic link which unites the ,hang-

sctjof execution. At ibis point

eligibly becomes jsubject^ to an ethical judgment. It
ndecencj^ PeAaps^, these considerations
nMligiblejthat_tibere ^ are situations in which
juestion_of^our introduction may J^coroe^an even sharpen
JSsd^oa^ J,.a.C3bdsliaxi21L^

iave_occ^sion later on Jo^discuss various aspects of this ques-
ion and various possibilities of answering it. First it is im-
xirtaiif to grasp the import of the question.

22 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

For the Individual religion can thus become the refuge
from the frightening vertigo of alternation. It gives him the
semblance of a face. It gives his world structure and purpose.
It makes demands upon him, even threatens and punishes
him, but even in the possibility of damnation it allows him
to live in an ordered cosmos. Hell is also part of the religious
universe. What is more important for our argument, religion
provides the common frame of reference within which the
actors on the stage can coordinate their little parts. In a very
real sense, religion provides both script and dramatis personae
for the social play. v It may even add the reassurance that the
play is written and directed by the master impresario himself.
The bleeding bodies and the chopped-off heads become part
of this stage management.

If we now seem to be on the verge of an atheist manifesto,
this is neither an accident nor a mistake. It will be our task
later on to show why the atheist critique of religion is im-
portant and what it means to the perspective on society here
described. We shall now come to a close of this introduction
by pointing to the only Christian resolution of our argument
that we can find a confrontation of our perception of society
with the figure of Jesus Christ. It is this figure of the crucified
one which continues to haunt both the oppressors and the
oppressed, casting its shadow over the religious celebrations
and at the same time intruding its disturbing light into the
corners where one escapes the sacred drums. Our task thus
begins where it seemed to end. We now find that it is not
enough to perceive society and religion, but we are compelled
to relate this perception to a demand that transcends both
society and religion the demand to follow this figure of the
crucified one. This demand calls us to an exodus, not only out
of the Egypt of social mythology but also out of the Zion
of religious security- The exodus takes us out of the holy city,
out past the scene of cross and resurrection, and beyond into
the desert in which God is waiting. In this desert all horizons
are open.

2. Exercises in Alternation

In this chapter we shall try to clarify our concept of alternation
with the use of the imagination. The chapter consists of four
fictitious cases. The first two cases, that of Susie Q. and that of
Gustav, illustrate alternation as it operates in the actual
biographies of individuals. The case of Susie Q. is intended
to illustrate the matter in a low key, as it were. It presents a
story which could happen any day, anywhere in America.
Between the plain narration of what happened to Susie and
various "alternating" interpretations of these events is inserted
a brief passage providing a sociological conceptual apparatus
which can be used to analyze not only the events but also the
various interpretations. The sociological point of view ex-
pressed here will be developed further in Chapter 3, but an
indication of it is introduced here to facilitate our "exercises/*
Coming then to the case of Gustav, alternation here presents
itself fortissimo, with the clash of cymbals and the blare of
trumpets. Each step in the story presents us with the spectacle
of Weltanschauungen engaged in a titanic competition for our
character's allegiance. The last two cases are franldy surrealis-
tic. One might even ask whether such fantasies have a place
in our argument. We would contend that they do. They serve
to illustrate alternation at the point of vertigo, where all our
assumptions concerning the nature of the universe appear
as questionable. What is more, they may entertain those
on whom it has dawned that the ploy may be a cosmic
principle.

THE PRECARIOUS VISION

(i) THE CASE OF SUSIE Q.

(#) Record of the Case (Needless to add, the story here told is
imaginary suppose that this record is being read by a flat-chested
social worker, in a voice from which all affect has been sucessf ully
purged.)

Susie Q. is twenty-one years old, a senior in a college in the
northeastern section of the United States. Both parents are living.
Susie is the oldest of three children, the only daughter. Both
parents are white, native-born Americans, active members of the
Episcopal church. They are in their middle forties. The two boys
are aged fifteen and twelve. Susie's father is employed as a sales-
man for a vacuum-cleaner firm. The family lives in their own
house in a medium-rent residential area of a city with a population
of about 100,000.

In an intelligence test taken in her freshman year Suise's I.Q.
was found to be 120. She is in excellent health. Susie is considered
an attractive girl in the various groups she has associated with.

The Q/s are regarded as a "fine family" by their neighbors and
associates. Family decisions are normally taken on the initiative of
Susie's mother. Before coming to the city in which they now re-
side, the Q/s were Methodists* Susie's mother joined the Episcopal
church, her husband following her some years later.

During her sophomore year Susie began to associate with a group
of fellow students known as the *T>eatnik crowd" on her campus.
For several months she dated a young man belonging to this
group. After a time of increasingly intimate sexual play the couple
spent a night in a motel and engaged in coitus. This episode
was Susie's first sexual experience. She did not experience orgasm.
Immediately after the motel escapade Susie broke off all relations
with the young man and the group to which he belonged. She
became very active in the campus Canterbury Club, of which she
had been a very passive member before, and was elected its
president at the end of the academic year. She told her pastor
that she had gone through a profound religious experience and
discussed with him the possibility of going into graduate work in
religious education. During the summer vacation between her
sophomore and junior years she worked in an inner-city missionary
project of her denomination.

EXERCISES IN ALTERNATION 25

During her junior year Susie began dating a yonng man, eight
years her senior., employed in a minor executive position in an
advertising agency in a nearby city. This young man, regarded as
an "egghead" by his associates, introduced Susie into a group
of young people, most of them engaged in various aspects of mass
communications, sociable mostly with each other, and given to
what they themselves considered "sophisticated" activities. Susie
refused sexual relations with her new young man, and when
alone the couple mainly engaged in conversation, in the course
of which Susie discussed at length her family background and
the "beatnik" episode of the previous year. Her interest in
religious activities diminished again and she resigned from the
presidency of the Canterbury Club, pleading overwork. The couple
announced their engagement in the spring. After the engagement
had been announced Susie consented to sexual relations. Again
she found herself unable to reach orgasm, despite earnest attempts
and supplementary reading. In the beginning of her senior year,
upon the advice of her fianc^ Susie began seeing a psychotherapist

(b) Sociological Propositions

Social interaction is organized in roles (of this more later).

Individual roles are organized in clusters within which consist-
ency is functionally desirable. Such consistency is both external and
internal. External consistency means that the individual's actions
present a cohesive whole to the outside world. Internal consistency
means that his actions present such a whole to himself, in terms of
his ideas, emotionality and picture of himself. If such consistency
cannot be maintained, chances are that the individual will ex-
perience anxiety and become psychologically disturbed.

Each cluster of roles is related to a specific reference group;
that is, the individual in his actions refers himself to certain
distinctive groups of people.

Each of these reference groups exists in a specific world-taken-
for-granted. Putting this into different words, human groups differ
in their meaning systems, in the beliefs and perceptions of the
world through which they give order and consistency to their
actions. Such meaning systems vary greatly in intellectual elabora-
tion and in degree of comprehensiveness. A highly comprehensive
meaning system will seek to include all other available meaning

26 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

systems within itself, interpreting them in its own terms. A less
comprehensive meaning system will simply exclude, refect or even
fail to perceive other meaning systems. In the case of Susie Q.
meaning systems of lx>th high and low comprehensiveness are
involved. In the case of Gustav, following it, the interaction of
three highly comprehensive meaning systems may "be observed.
Choice between reference groups will involve choice between
their respective meaning systems. That is, social affiliation or dis-
affiliation involves specific ways of looking at the world and of
conceiving it intellectually. 1

(c) The Worlds of Susie Q.

THE HOME WORLD: The horizon is South Elm Street; beyond
it is the Cathedral. The world is safe, essentially in order, grouped
in concentric circles around the Q. home. This is America white,
middle-class, Protestant but there really is no counter-world.
Those outside this America are themselves suffused in benign
light. They may even be objects of benevolent concern. They
cannot seriously threaten or disrupt. Other worlds are hard to
imagine, if at all then in a romantic conception, Susie moves
through this world as the bright, young, all-Ainerican Thing, She
is father's little girl, mother's little helper, and big sister. She is
cheerful, sweetly sloppy, makes practical jokes, wears any old
clothes. One talks easily, gossips, and kids one another, only drops
into a serious hush in the shadow of the Cathedral. From within
its charmed circle this world looks at Susie and interprets what
has happened to her:

"Susie has always been a volatile, breathless girl. Maybe she didn't
get enough discipline when she was a child, but she was always
so sweet that it was hard to interfere with her. Usually she got
her way, sooner or later. Even so one certainly couldn't say that
she wasn't properly raised. She would never do anything wrong
knowingly. So it was quite a surprise when she started going
around with that mixed-up crowd in college. As it turned out it
didn't do her much harm. She never talked much about this
time at home, but we can be sure of one thing she would never
do anything that her parents would have to be ashamed about.
Perhaps the whole thing even did her some good. It made her
see the other side, so to speak, and gave her an appreciation of

EXERCISES IN ALTERNATION 27

the way she was raised. She snapped out of It in no way at alL
Her fiance is a fine fellow. Polite, well brought up* He's going to
be very successful in his chosen field. Hell give Susie a decent
home. There's no reason why they shouldn't be very happy to-
gether. Well, from what Susie now tells, they move around with
a crowd a little faster than her Dad or Mom would feel comfortable
with. But then they are still young. They'll settle down. And one
has to be reasonable and make allowances for changing times."

ALTERNATION: In the world of the "beatnik crowd" (the ad-
jective would meet with derision in San Francisco) Susie is a
female novice. This world transforms America from cosmos
to dungeon. On the horizon is Madison Avenue, the counter-world
of the enemy, but within the group there Is refuge and liberation.
As its counter-world, this world does not grasp or penetrate In-
tellectually alternate ways of life. It excludes them, though its
exclusion is more hostile than that of either Madison Avenue or
South Elm Street. Here Susie Is rather quiet, trying to pick up
cues, eager to learn the expectations of the group but trying not
to show her eagerness, for it is important not only to be cool
but always to have been so. Within the limitations of her budget
and equipment, Susie's outward appearance begins to come up
to the standards of the group. This allows the rest of the campus
to identify her as a member of the group, an identification she
anxiously seeks and then haughtily looks down upon. It is by
no means easy to be a sophomore. But Susie's residence in this
world is only a transitory one:

"Susie's a good kid or could be, if she let herself. She's got
looks, brains. If she wanted to she could really swing. But you
got to make allowances for her background* The worst* Hick
town. Hick folks. The living room a nightmare of Americana. Still-
life prints on the walls. Antee-cues underneath them. A complete
set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica next to the TV. Church
programs all over the place. The old man sells vacuum cleaners and
the old lady runs missionary bazaars. What can you expect? She
tried, poor kid. For a few months she tried and for one miserable
night in a miserable motel room, with a Gideon Bible on the
table and a coin radio on the dresser. It was too much for her. Now
she's gone back to her very own. She's engaged to a station wagon

28 THE PKECAMOI7S VISION

and a mortgage, 3.2 Icids on the runway, suburbia here I come! It
was good while it lasted. So long, Susie, and good luck to you!"

ALTERNATION: The world of Susie's religious conversion is not
quite that of the Cathedral, because the Cathedral doesn't quite
have the right point of view as yet. It's rather the little Anglo
Catholic chapel down the street, where Father Schleissbauer lisps
through High Mass and a visiting Anglican Benedictine lectures
on English plainsong to the ex-Baptist wives of successful insurance
salesmen, Susie is a young Christian woman, in the process of
deepening her faith. She is not too far away here from South Elm
Street^ but the sloppy teen-ager is now suffused by Sunday-morning
earnestness. This world prides itself on the all-embracing quality
of its perspective and a considerable intellectual machinery is set
in motion to interpret (and thus reinterpret in one's own terms)
alternate ways of life. As to Father Schleissbauer, he sees himself
in sacerdotal images (which occasionally frighten himself) and his
words as caught up in the sweep of centuries which means that
his interpretations are brought forth with great assurance:

"The true story of any human being is the stoiy of faith. This is
why the decisive point in Susie's story is the point of her conver-
sion. Looking at her story in any other way will distort the picture,
because only at this point, where a human life touches upon the
divine, is truth to be found. Certainly there were elements of
immaturity in this experience. However, faith can never be under-
stood in terms of the conditions of its inception, Susie knew what
she was doing. With full deliberation she confessed the Catholic
faith and was willing to take the consequences in her life. But
Susie's main sin has always been vanity, the desire to please and to
be flattered. Perhaps her parents, good Christians though they are,
have contributed to this through the lax way in which she was
raised. Susie wanted to please her college friends. Now she wants to
please the sophisticated crowd to which her fiance belongs. Since
pleasing now involves her in sin (and not only the mortal sin of
the flesh), she wants to find a way by which her change of life can
be excused. She has found this excuse in psychotherapy. It is surely
no accident that she chose a Freudian as her therapist, so that the
so-called libido becomes the final criterion of her actions. After all,
it was sexual sin which started her on her course of apostasy. Her
present therapy is nothing but a giant rationalization to cover up

EXERCISES IN ALTERNATION 29

the betrayal of her faith. Neither her parents nor her fianc6 can
understand this. But deep down in her heart Susie understands.
She will find out (hopefully before it is too late) that one cannot
escape the 'hound of heaven/ "

ALTERNATION: The world of Susie's fianc also has Madison
Avenue on its horizon, but here it serves as a positive image. Its less
positive aspects are reconciled in amusement. This world is neither
home nor enemy. It is a world to be made. You're in the know,
you're with it, and America is good to you. You're sophisticated,
you live in the twentieth century, which means that you under-
stand everything, so you can be quite tolerant of other angles on
life. Susie now begins to live up to the images of the billboards.
She is becoming smooth, knowing, calculates within the arithmetic
taken for granted by this group. This is expressed in her dress,
manners, language. In fact, she is on the way to becoming a
mature American woman:

"To understand Susie one must understand her background.
Only then can you see how far she has come on the way to becom-
ing a mature person. Maybe class is one of the most important
things to understand. Susie's parents are respectable, lower-middle-
class people, living in a typical medium-sized town, trying hard to
become upper-middle-class. They furnish their home in what they
think is good taste. They send their kids to college. They subscribe
to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. They join the Episcopal church.
Sure, they mean well They are basically fine people, once you
abstract from their prejudices. But no wonder Susie wanted a little
taste of gutter once she got beyond the range of South Elm Street
gossip. No wonder, either, that she felt guilty as hell after the very
first taste of it. It'll take a little time for Susie to stand on her own
two feet and to make her way in the world. But shell make it.
Religion was a cratch. Right now psychotherapy is another, though,
of course, a much better one. But shell get so she doesn't need any
crutches at all. When that happens shell make the finest little wife
anyone ever had in any of the fifteen regional offices of Apex,
Inc.!"

ALTERNATION: The world of Susie's psychotherapist is a world
unto itself, but of all her other worlds it is most closely related to
that of her fiance. Over the incestuous puddles and the dark

30 THE PRECAMQUS VISION

swamps o homicide rises the vision of the happy life, understood
in terms not too different from those of Susie's fianc. Psycho-
therapy is part of the pursuit of happiness. The world is darker
than it seemed at fiist 7 but it is still to be made* This world seeks to
include all others within itself and for this purpose has at its dis-
posal an impressive array of intellectual tools. Susie is as impressed
as they come. And she likes it. She is a young American woman,
growing op though troubled. But her troubles are interesting*
Curled up within herself in the posture dictated by the psycho-
therapeutic gymnastics, she perceives herself in a new way:

"In the case of Susie Q, we can see in operation an almost
classical combination of forces- A strong, aggressive mother. A
weak, pliant father. Siblings do not appear until well into Susie's
genital stage. Her sexuality well fixated on her father, it is threat-
ened powerfully by the mother* At the same time, the mother is
the moral and religious direction-giver of the family. Susie's moral-
ity and religiosity, then, can be seen as appeasement of the mater-
nal rival, essentially a mechanism of guilt abreaction. Since sexu-
ality involves the constant resurgence of the incestuous impulse,
with the accompanying guilt and anxiety, it is strongly repressed.
But not wholly so. The "beatnik" episode, occurring during Susie's
first physical separation from her parents, was the first onslaught of
Susie's libido againsf the maternally oriented superego. It may be
indicative of Susie's appeasement syndrome that she chose a 'beat-
nik 7 group for her first steps into sexuality there are decidedly
feminine, if not masochistic, traits to the sexuality of this group*
Not surprisingly, the first step of sexual liberation is followed by a
headlong flight into guilt. Now the appeasement of the mother is
almost explicit. Susie undergoes a religious conversion. It is surely
no accident that she chose the Anglo-Catholic group as the milieu
of her conversion. The peculiarly feminine character of Anglo-
Catholic religiosity is patently obvious. In the sacramental-liturgical
universe, between incense and soft words, the guilt is atoned. Yet
Susie's repressions have been relatively benign and her libido con-
tinues to press against her defenses. In her fianc6 she has met
the first strong father-surrogate of her young life an older man,
but not weak or pliant, rattier an aggressive, virile individual. As
she begins to feel secure in this relationship the repressions weaken.
Through her present psychotherapy, helped by the understanding
attitude of her fianc4 Susie is beginning to understand herself.
She is well on the way to sexual and social adjustment/*

EXERCISES IN ALTERNATION 3!

(if) THE CASE OF GUSTAV

(a) Record of the Case

Gustav was born in the late 1920*$ in a medium-sized industrial
town in the Middle West, the only child of Scandinavian immi-
grants. Gustav's father, a small "businessman of moderate but com-
fortable means, had married Gustav's mother a week after her
engagement to a rival suitor and left with her for America the
next day. Gustav led a very protected childhood in a bilingual
home, had few friends until the age of adolescence, early developed
an avid interest in reading. He was a regular Sunday-school pupil
and altar boy at the local Scandinavian Lutheran church, always
very serious in the performance of his religious duties. Gustav's
father died in an accident when Gustav was twelve years old,
leaving behind him a business that could adequately support the
widow and her child. Two years later, while Gustav was going
through instruction fox confirmation, he showed signs of great
emotional disturbance over a period of several months* During this
period he attached himself even more closely to his church, became
active in its youth program. Considered a very precocious child by
those around him, Gustav read a large number of religious books.
His pastor, who took a kindly interest in the boy, let him make
free use of his library, and Gustav became highly conversant in
Lutheran theological writings, also took a great interest in the
works of

Gustav ^^^^^^into the service fust before the end of World
War II, spent only about one year in uniform, all of it in the South.
Upon his release he began studying at the University of Chicago,
maforing in j^ijoso^hjr. During his junior year in college he came
into contact with a group of Communist students, among whom
he formed some warm personal friendships. Among these new
friends were Jack, a very intelligent young Negro holding office in
the campus Communist organization, and Hona, an exchange
student from Hungary. Gustav began a passionate affair with Hona,
the first of his life his sexual experiences so far had been fleeting
relationships with pickups much below him in social status and a
few visits to brothels while in the service. Gustav made a serious
study of Marxism and wrote several articles on what he called "the
Christian alternative to Communism." He initiated a plan to start

32 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

an interracial Lutheran church in a section of Chicago increasingly
invaded by Negro residents. This plan failed as a result of strong
opposition from conservative churchmen in Gustav's denomina-
tion. At this point Gustav broke off all his church connections
and involved himself wholeheartedly in the Communist organiza-
tion run by his friend Jack.

In the summer after his graduation from the University of
Chicago, Gustav received an invitation to attend a Communist-
sponsored youth conference in Budapest. Ilona and he traveled to
Europe together, arrived in Budapest after a few weeks of tourism
in various European countries. One week after their arrival there,
Ilona was arrested by the political police on suspicion of espionage.
She was formally expelled from the Young Communist League and
disappeared in a penal labor camp, Gustav attempted to intervene
on her behalf with police and party agencies, was himself arrested
and turned over to American authorities at the Austrian border.

Gustav suffered a nervous breakdown. After some weeks in an
Austrian sanatorium he returned to America, took a job with a
publishing firm in New York. Two months after his establishment
in New York he entered psychoanalysis. He lived in New York for
a year, then decided to resume studying. He received a scholarship
to a Swiss university and began graduate work in philosophy.
During his stay in Switzerland he became very friendly with
Armin, an older student with special interests in the study of
mysticism.

(b} Documents in the Case

JOURNEYS OF GUSTAV: The following are extracts from Gus-
tav's diary, which he began to keep shortly after he started college.
The extracts are marked to show the period during which they
were written. The first extract is from the early pages of the diary,
written shortly after Gustav's establishment at the University of
Chicago:

"Men need faith. The Christian faith is not the only one that
offers to satisfy this need. There is, as it were, a market of faiths.
What are we going to buy? Many of the faiths offering themselves
on this market are most seductive to our intellect, while others
promise us profound revelations into the meaning of life and peace
of mind, Sometimes the Gospel may seem poor by comparison
with this array of worldly proclamations. Yet Christian faith knows

EXERCISES IN ALTERNATION 33

that ultimately it Is the only alternative to despair. AH other faiths
ultimately lead to one or another form of desperation (quiet or
otherwise)* What remains for ever is the Christian proclamation
that at the very center of the universe is infinite love. . , .

"Christian faith is never like the false securities offered by the
faiths of this world. One can never put one's hands on the object
of faith and say, 'Ah, now I have it!' Christian faith is always in-
secure, always trust and surrender in Him whom we cannot see.
As put it, Christian faith is venturing far, far out onto

the sea, swimming over 70,000 fathoms of deep, out where there
is nothing but emptiness and God. Because Christian faith has
this character, the Christian life is one of adventure, the adventure
of daring to follow Jesus Christ. Recently I came across a modern
version of Pascal's famous "betting argument' in the writings of Kaj
Munk, the Danish pastor murdered by the Nazis because of his
courageous opposition to the persecution of the Jews. This is (in
so many words) what Kaj Munk says: Yes, perhaps it is all a mis-
take, this business about Christianity. Sometimes it really looks to
me like that Perhaps all this talk about God and Jesus Christ and
the salvation of man is just a collection of fairy tales. And I am a
minister. I am in the employment of Jesus Christ and for this work
the Danish government pays me 40,000 crowns as a salaiy. Perhaps
this is a mistake too. Perhaps it is a mistake to preach love and for-
giveness in a hate-torn world, to rescue those who are in need, to
teach the children,, to comfort the lonely and the dying. But if it is
a mistake, then it is a beautiful mistake. If Christianity should turn
out to be true after all, then unbelief will have been a very ugly
mistake. . . /*

The next extract is from the period just before Gtistav broke off
his relations with the church and began to consider himself a
Marxist:

"Above all, I have the feeling with Marxism as if, for the first time
in my life, I have come to grips with reality. It is a terrifying ex-
perience, yet full of the freshness of a breeze coming in from the
lake. It seems to me now that all the words I have written on these
pages before (so many words!) were nothing but a smoke screen
preventing me from looking at the world with honesty. Especially
it seems to me that; with all my words about love and humanity,
I have never really seen people before. For example, I never really
saw those stupid board secretaries who squelched our interracial

54 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

project. I looked at them as representatives of the church, members
of the invisible body of Christ, Nor did I really see the people on
the South Side that our project was to serve. Between my eyes
and social reality stood some sort of a silly picture maybe the
castle church in Wittenberg and good old Luther hammering his
theses on the wall as if this had anything to do with my life or
theirs! . . .

**I have asked myself whether my feelings about Ilona are
coming in the way of my judgment. After analyzing my feelings as
sharply as I can, I come to the conclusion that this is not so. If I
were as certain about Christianity as I was a year ago, I would go
on my way even if it meant losing Ilona, no matter how painful
that might be. Yet I think that there is a social element in my pres-
ent thinking, though it is not concerned exclusively with Ilona. It
is a question of whom one wants to belong to. I think of the
bloated, embarrassed faces of the Lutheran board secretaries to
whom I presented our interracial project, or the benevolent
face of my pastor, when he advised me (with so much kind under-
standing!) of my youth and inexperience in matters of the church.
And then I think of the faces of my Marxist friends no, not just
Ilona but all of them, arguing heatedly in Tony's smoke-filled
back room that pock-marked old Spanish anarchist who got into
such a fight with Jack the other day and always Jack, with his face
lighting up under a new thought, with that cigarette perpetually
dangling from the corner of his mouth. And then I know where I
want to belong! * . .

"I have had the curious experience that I begin a day as a
Christian and end it as a Marxist, or vice versa, with moods of
insight (that's a poor term, but the best I can think of right now)
changing back and forth within me. Yesterday, for instance, I got
up with a headache (as so often these days), decided to cut my
morning classes, instead sat in Grant Park reading Lenin. Page by
page I bit my way through his analysis of the Bolsheviks' dif-
ferences with Kautsky and Plekhanov in the years before the
October Revolution, was taken up by the argument, swept away
into the world from which these thoughts came to me. In the after-
noon I went to hear an address by a visiting theology professor
from Germany who talked about the reinterpretation of Reforma-
tion theology in recent years. I suddenly found myself shaking with
the fear of losing my Christian faith, left the meeting with the

EXERCISES IN ALTERNATION 35

thought that I ought not to give up quite yet, that I ought to hold
on to the one great certainty I ever had. In the evening I met
Ilona, Jack, and some of the others. We sat at Tony's until two in
the morning, drinking beer and talking, talking, talking, I kissed
Ilona good night, much later, and on the long El ride home Chris-
tianity seemed as far away as last year's snow. In this way I am
literally shaken by every 'wind of doctrine/ I tried to combat this
helplessness by the means which Christian faith enjoins. I prayed,
read the Bible, went to services, partook of the Sacrament. My state
did not change and these practices seemed increasingly dishonest.
The voices from my own past, all the things that I had said and that
had been said to me about Christianity, keep corning back to my
mind, holding me back from the step I am considering. To quote
St. Augustine in reverse, as it were, all these things keep holding
me back, whispering in my ear, 'Are you sending us away? . . .
From this moment shall we not be with you, now or forever? 7 Yet
the persistence of my 'Marxist voices 7 remains and these latter voices
are beginning to drown out the voices of my past. I feel that I am
moving toward a decision. It will not be long now, I think. As
Lenin wrote in the spring of 1917, 'it is time to cast off the dirty
shirt, it is time to put on a clean one/ "

The last extracts from Gustav's diary that we want to submit here
were written in Austria, after the events in Budapest and as he was
recovering from his nervous breakdown. The pages from this
period are very disorganized and only fragments of the material
make cohesive sense:

"I still cannot conceive how this could have happened, how it
did happen. The morning in Stalin Stadium. The thousands of
banners, flags, marching youth, the warm sunlight. The night in
the police headquarters, the many impassive faces, the explana-
tions in the language I could not understand, the laborsome
translations. Ilona gone, gonel Oh my God! , . . The night before
they arrested me I walked for hours, it must have been miles, from
one end of the city to the other, over countless bridges, again and
again the dark stream of the Danube under me, the rattling of
dilapidated streetcars, rabble, empty construction lots, a chilly wind
I hardly felt. There was no God, no future, not even a present,
just the screaming-silent memory of what had happened. Her
smiles, the smell of her body, the way she raises her eyebrows, her
indestructible accent . . . The illusion has gone like smoke, all of

36 THE PRECARIOUS VISION"

it. The mask has "been torn from the face of God and behind it is
a fat little man in a grayish uniform, with three stars on his collar,
fingering a typed sheet of paper and quietly speaking in Hungarian.
I hate. I hate. I never thought I could hate so completely- . . .
For a few moments it seemed to me as if again I could see the hand
of God, that old God of my Christian faith, the judgment calling
me back to faith. Fragments of the litany kept drifting through my
mind. In all time of our tribulation; in all time of our prosperity;
in the hour of death . . / To beat down Satan under our feet . /
Obscenities all. Nothing but obscenities. There is nothing "beyond"
anywhere. There is nothing but this insane, tormented world of
men. I thought of killing myself, but I didn't. Why do I live? What
keeps me alive is fear and hate. Nothing else. Not a shred of a shred
of faith. . . ."

THE WORI,D OF 0R. vxADiMm HLOBUNKA: Dr. Hlobunka prac-
tices his art in a rather gloomy office in the East Sixties of Man-
hattan, Peering through his thick glasses, he explained to Gustav
in his MifteZ-Eiiropean accents that the payment of an adequate
fee was essential to a successful analysis ("This may seem a little
funny to you now, especially with your Marxist past" a benevo-
lent smile through the glasses "but at a later stage of the analysis
you will understand fully**). Gustav didn't have any particularly
Marxist thoughts. He reflected briefly how it could be that people
so often looked like their caricatures, as if reality was trying to keep
up with the cartoonist, rather than the other way around. But he
was in no mood to argue or to have amused thoughts. The follow-
ing are extracts from Dr. Hlobunka's notes on the case of Gustav,
kept in near-illegible longhand and stored in the near-magnificent
disorder of a battered filing cabinet (Dr. Hlobunka to his friends,
"I possess a most remarkably anal character"):

"The evidence indicates almost complete failure to resolve the
Oedipal conflict as a child* Faced with a strong, domineering
father and a mother always sickly, meek, submissive, the conflict
must have been very sharp in Gustav's early years. The number of
his childhood diseases may indicate this too. Then the conflict
was evidently repressed very deeply. Gustav became a 'good
child/ He obediently submitted himself to his father* s castration.
He was a good student in school, Veil behaved/ attached to his
home, faithful in his religious duties. Then, at a crucial age, came

EXERCISES IN ALTERNATION 37

the trauma of the father's sudden death. The patricidal wish, acting
magically out of the unconscious, was suddenly fulfilled. The father
was (literally) killed and victory in the Oedipal conflict seemed to
be in Gustav's hands. Now, of course, terrible guilt set in* The
Oedipal wish had to be repressed even more deeply. With the on-
come of puberty the conflict became unbearable. Gustav's 'con-
version 7 to an active Christianity was his attempted solution.

"Gustav's religious 'conversion' constituted an attempt to solve
the Oedipal conflict by a deeper submission to his father, becoming
reconciled with him, only that now the father took on the cosmic
proportions of the Christian God. The Lutheran theology, which
Gustav now avidly absorbed, offered a perfect pattern for such an
attempt. The father is accepted by the child as an overwhelming
castrating figure God is holy and can only be approached in acute
terror. Facing this father, the child is utterly impotent man is
sinful by nature and cannot redeem himself out of his own strength.
In acknowledging this impotence and submitting to the father
completely, the child can still be saved from the threat of castration
and death, which threat is accepted as the just reward for the child's
patricidal sin the confession of sins, 'We are by nature sinful
and unclean/ and so on in the Lutheran liturgy. The father's
answer to this act of complete submission is forgiveness the
Lutheran experience of grace. Moreover, there now begins a new
life with the father, whose forgiveness enables the child to live, in
spite of his impotence, out of the father's potency the paradox of
the Christian life as expressed in Luther's simul iustus et peccator.
In this way Gustav became a Christian. His compulsion is now to
convert all other rebels against the father. The missionary syndrome
each conversion is an assurance that the forces of rebellion
within oneself are successfully quelled. It is indicative that Gus-
tav's missionary zeal picked on Negroes as an object the Negro, of
course, being a primary phallic symbol the black penis offered
sacrificially to the avenging father! 2

"It is important to see in what way Gustav's intellectual con-
flicts are rationalizations of his unconscious conflicts onto a con-
ceptual plane. With his Marxist friends in Chicago Gustav encoun-
tered a group of seemingly successful rebels, free and apparently
unshaken by guilt. When Gustav became a member of this group
(one is reminded here of the American adage of 'When you
can't lick 'em, join 'em!'), Marxism again provided him with a

38 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

pattern highly suitable to resolve his inner conflicts, as Lutheranism
had been before. Here he found rebellion against the father (now
symbolized by all constituted authority in society as it exists)
openly espoused a creed of total revolution. The father is proudly
killed Marxist atheism. All guilt about this is dismissed as an illu-
sionreligion is the opium of the people. The rewards to Gustav
were immediate. In his sexual relationship with Ilona he appeared,
finally, to have achieved victory in the Oedipal conflict. At the
same time, his act of rebellion was not an isolated one, but fie
found himself sheltered in the horde of fellow patricides the
brotherhood of the world-wide Communist movement. It might
have happened that Gustav could have maintained a precarious
adjustment with the help of his Marxist pattern, constituting, as it
did, a neurotic adjustment socially acceptable within a certain
group. The events in Budapest, however, brought on a new trauma,
shattering this precarious structure within which Gustav's virility
could operate and bringing up again the old conflict with renewed
violence. It now seemed to Gustav that his rebellion had only
brought him a temporary victory. The hand of the father had
struck again God is not mocked! For was it not the father who
had taken Dona away, turned the brothers into enemies, and
threatened Gustav himself with terrible death? This was the mo-
ment of Gustav's most complete impotence. He might easily have
regressed to the infantile masochism of his old Lutheran pattern.
It is indicative of the amount of libidinous liberation that had
actually taken place during Gustav's Marxist (sic) period, despite
its obvious neurotic dimensions, that he did not take this course.
Instead, after his return to America, Gustav began to understand
the unconscious dynamics at work and found his way into analysis.
Prognosis: excellent!"

JACK'S WORLD: Some time after his return to America Gustav
wrote to Jack. The following is from Jack's reply:

"Tour letter is full of subjectivities and abstractions to which an
answer is impossible. Let us speak concretely. What really happened
to you has nothing whatever to do with the mystifications you
mouth in your letter 'human dignity' and *basic decency* and
'deception by false Messianism' to mention but a few of the
glittering phrases you throw at me. What really happened is that
Ilona, a girl you slept with for some time, has been arrested as a

EXERCISES IN ALTERNATION 39

spy. This Is all that happened. The rest is nothing but a movement
within your own mind. You maintain that Ilona has been inno-
cently' arrested. You write that, all the time you knew her, Ilona
was evidently a convinced Communist and that it is beyond
imagination that you could have been deceived. I could certainly
say a few things here about the rather patent limitations of your
imagination, about the obvious fact that imperialist agents sent
into our camp will not advertise themselves as such, and about the
long experience of our party organs in tracking down such scum.
The party, my dear Gustav, does not make mistakes very easily!
But I think that, from your own point of view (assuming that you
still retain the capacity to think clearly) it might be more profitable
if you asked yourself what the word 'innocent' means. Even if we
assume that subjectively Ilona had no antiparty thoughts when (in
your company, incidentally) she rubbed shoulders with American
intelligence agents in London, Paris, and even after the beginning
of the Budapest congress this changes nothing in the case. The
party is not interested in Ilona's so-called 'inner life.' The party is in-
terested in the objective character of her actions. Speaking con-
cretely, and pushing away the abstractions which becloud the
issue, Ilona is as guilty of treason as the worst Trotzkyite in the
textbooks and you know it!

"But now let us come to you, my little ex-CommunisL Your
treason does not even have the courage of conviction. It is the
sickly, cowardly reaction of the petty-bourgeois that, at heart, you
always were even when you were strutting around with a red
banner waving over you or rather hanging from your petty-
bourgeois penis, for it is right there that the matter really rests! It
was some bourgeois French painter who made the statement, T
paint with my penis' you were a Communist with your penis!
Yes, Gustav, don't shrink away from yourself look at yourself
honestly! Why did you come to us in the first place? For one reason
and one reason only to get over your Midwestern lily-white inhi-
bitions and shack up with the first girl who'd given you more than
a passing glance. The most disgusting thing about your oppor-
tunism is its erotic character. As I look back now on those days in
Chicago, the vilest fascist seems cleaner by comparison!

"I predict a great future for you in America. Perhaps you can
write some articles for the newspapers *My Years as a Commu-
nist Dupe" or 'Red Terror in Hungary 7 and be nominated Ex-

40 THE PEECARIOUS VISION

Communist of the Year by the American Legion. Or, of course,
you might return into the bosom of religion provided, of course,,
that your Lutheran ecclesiastics can forget your shocking sugges-
tion that the inferior races be welcomed into the congregation of
the saints. For the moment, I gather from your letter that you have
decided to 'get at the roots' of your troubles and submit yourself
to psychoanalysis. An excellent idea, Gustavl At least you'll be
able to deal at your heart's content with the sexual dirt which
seems to be the natural habitat of your Christian soul.

"I would not bother to write you at all were it not for the fact
that the American party needs men even such dubious men as
you. I am writing you in the dim hope that you still retain a vestige
of Marxist consciousness, that you can remember at least something
of what you learned with us. But don't misunderstand me Fm
not wooing you and I cannot promise you that the party would
take you back, even if you came crawling on your knees. Let me
only say that it would be your last act of manhood if you tried. 1 '

ALTERNATION BACK TO DR. HLOBUNE^'s WOKUD: Brief entry

from Dr. Hlobunka's notebook:

"It is interesting that, in the Gersthoff Dream-Sequence Test,
Gustav associates 'Ilona' with ANOLI a striking illustration of
the pregenital character of this relationship. Also note: 'Jack' (a
Negro, to boot) frequently found American idiom for penis
(along with 'Dick/ 'Peter/ et alia}. Also in the Gersthoff Test
Gustav associates 'Hungary' with its German form 'Ungarn,' adds
'tmgern* (German adjective for displeasure), then speaks of a
*dark stream/ 'many bridges/ Look up 'scrotum complex 7 in Meyer
&Hlobunka (the 1931 edition)/'

ARMXN'S WORU>: It is perhaps not fair to Armin to mention
that he comes from a long line of Swiss chocolate manufacturers,
that he wears impeccable clothes and speaks a fastidious Hoch-
deutsch which, on occasion and for special effect; he uses con-
trapuntally with the thickest Bernese dialect* It might be men-
tioned quite fairly that Armin is an avid and careful letter-writer.
Although Gustav and Armin lived about four blocks apart in the
Swiss university town where they studied, they frequently wrote
each other long letters, It is not necessary here to go into Arming
rationale concerning this, involving, as it does, a very complicated

EXERCISES IN ALTERNATION 41

philosophy of language and the written word quite "beyond our
immediate interests. The following is from one of Armin's letters:

"Your basic problem is with time. Because you cannot bear to
remain silent and waiting, even for a moment, you leap' (to
use your own Kierkegaardian term) from one position to another
into Christianity and out of it, into Marxism and out of that too,
and into that peculiarly massive mythology of your psychoanalysis.
To put this in somewhat different terms, all your religious and
quasi-religious positions have been of the nature of nervous des-
peration. This is what I mean when I say that your basic problem is
with time. What you must come to understand is that truth is not
a matter of decision. This goes for religious truth too. And here I
would suggest that your Lutheran starting point may have a lot to
do with what happened to you subsequently. In Lutheranism
(and, I suppose, in Protestantism generally) religion tends to
become a matter of subjective choice. This gives, indeed, a very
one-sided approach to religion. May I suggest to you that there are
other religious possibilities? And may I suggest further that you
might find more insights into your problems by turning to the
great mystic teachers (to what Aldous Huxley has referred to as
*the perennial philosophy") than by continuing to fight in the void
of religious illiteracy with various Protestant prophets (and their
all-too-Protestant Marxist and Freudian imitators)?

"You will only begin to understand your life, I think, when you
see it as a journey toward yourself into yourself. So far you have
only scraped the surface of your own reality. Your journeys on the
seas of Weltanschauung have been only intellectual, did not really
involve your being. You have recently complained to me about
this series of 'crises of faith' that you have gone through, then
added with a wry smile that you now find yourself 'in the un-
enviable position of a man who believes absolutely nothing/ Well,
I would say that if this were true (unfortunately it is not you still
believe far too much! ) there is no more promising condition that
you could be in! Stop 'believing' altogether! Try to know! Aban-
don 'faith'! Try knowledge! Those old heretics (whom the
proto-Lutherans of the early church did their best to liquidate) had
a good terminology for this alternative stop being a 'pistic,' a
believer become a 'gnostic,' a knower! Unlike the violent deci-
sions of 'faith,' however, such a path requires immense patience,

^2 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

painstaking searching, infinite self-discipline. This is why the world
is full of believers and very short of searchers after knowledge.

"I would venture one further interpretation to you. Your past
may have a deeper relationship to such a possible future than you
think. What has happened in your past is that all the 'faiths 7 you
have tried have crumbled before your eyes. This is very important.
Only when all 'f aith ? crumbles is the way opened to enter onto the
path of knowledge. This crumbling of 'faith* is what mystics have
called the "negative way* (or, to be more accurate, it is involved in
what is called this). When you have gone through the deepest
negation you will suddenly see one tiny opening into affirmation.
At that point the 'positive way 7 will begin.

"Let me make one final suggestion for tonight. Stop worrying
your head about interpreting and reinterpreting your past. None
of it is interesting enough for such cerebration. At best it is a
prologue. And never think again in psychological terms of asking
what your 'motives' were for this, or that, or the other thing. What
men like your Hlobunka call 'depth-psychological' relates to the
ocean of your self like a speck of sand relates to the total mass of
the earth! You haven't even dreamed yet what 'depth 7 really means!
Take instead the little book I gave you last week. Sit down in a
quiet place and start reading, very quietly, very slowly. Don't bring
to the book your own interpretations. Let the author be your guide.
And give yourself very, very much time! 7 '

(m) THE CASE OF THE INCONVENIENT SCROLL

**. . . the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which
in spite of much sensationalism in the publicity
given to it has opened the eyes of many people
to the problem of biblical research but which has
not changed the theological situation at all"

Paul TiUich 3

EXERCISES IN ALTERNATION 43

Archaeological Institute of St. James the Less*
Old City of Jerusalem

June 5, 1985

The Most Reverend Father

Monsignor Luigi Respirelli
Director of the Apologetic Section
ROME

Most Reverend Father,

I am sending you by special messenger the enclosed document,
one glance at which will convince you of the urgency of this matter.
Besides myself, only two of the Fathers here know about this. The
original scroll, of which the enclosed is a translation, is numbered
V 5778 and belongs to the group of the Quinran fragments on
which our Institute has been working for the last decade. There
can be no reasonable question about the authenticity and date of
the scroll.

We pray and await your reply in the greatest anxiety. It is perhaps
not saying too much, Most Reverend Father, if I add that the fate
of the Catholic world lies between these lines.

signed P. Jean Barton, S J.

Translated from the Aramaic by PP. Gir&rd, Schwertfeger, "Barton:

Peace salutation (be) unto you forever.
This greeting (to the) master (of the) congregation.
Greetings (to) all brothers in (the) congregation (of) righteous-
ness. (The) bonds (of) death (have) not held me. Delivery came
(by the) power (of the) Name (from the) wickedness (of the)
Roman and (the) malice (of the) children (of) darkness in Israel.
Death (did) not come on (the) Roman's cross. My body (was)
lain in (an) empty tomb (to be) rescued by Shimon and Yocha-
nan on whom (be) peace. (I) rest in (the) house (of) Miriam
(the) sinner. (I) give thanks (to) YY for my deliverance. (The)
cup (of) bitterness (has) passed.

My great desire (is) to return (to the) peace (of the) congrega-
tion. Too much rumor (has) troubled Judea (of) new Messiahs
and (of) mighty events. Now men say foolishly (that) my body

44 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

(has) risen from (the) realm (of) death. YY alone lives forever.
(I) seek peace. (I) bow (to) you master. (I) hold unto (the)
congregation and wait (for the) coming (of the) teacher (of)
righteousness on (the) clouds (of) light. Yeshua bar Yosef whom
(the) people call (the) Nazarene.

(iv) THE CASE OF THE INCONVENIENT MARTIANS

"The possibility of life on other planets is not
seen, therefore, as a threat to the Christian view
of the drama of redemption."

Martin J. Heinecken*

The Esquire calendar tacked onto the door of the pilot cabin
showed June 1995. r ^ ie sma W J e t craft was two hours out of New
Hoboken, Mars, on a routine scouting mission. Its crew of three
was gathered up front drinking what passed for coffee on Mars,
There was little else to do. Underneath, the flat desolate landscape
stretched on mile after mile. It was as uninspiring as the coffee.

The three men were wearing the dark blue uniform of the UN
Space Authority. Two of them, Brady the pilot and Hirabashi the
ecologist, had worn that uniform when they were with the first
space ship that landed on Mars three years previously. The tremen-
dous excitement of those first days had paled somewhat. Life on
Mars had become to these men a routine almost like any other.
Most of their life took place within the small bubble domes that
marked the scattered human outposts on the alien planet. The rest
consisted of endless flights over empty continents, ocasionally land-
ing, taking samples and photographs, plotting coordinates on the
meager maps already available, and preparing new maps for the as
yet uncharted areas. And, once every six months, Earth a few
weeks of recovering the threads with one's past, with one's mind
and senses, recovering the feeling of matter-of-fact humanity.

The third crew member, Bartou, was on his first hitch to Mars,
Nothing on his uniform indicated that, in addition to being a
commissioned archaeologist with UNSA, he was a Jesuit father.
Since his arrival he had had little to do. No signs of intelligent life
had been found on Mars. Yet there had been the interesting palaeo-

EXERCISES IN ALTERNATION 45

logical findings, not far from New Hoboken, which several authori-
ties felt sure were implements of some sort. All the same, the small,
rotund French priest had ample time to work on his doctor's
thesis, or rather his second doctor's thesis he had begun some ten
years before a work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, but had then switched
to a very interesting problem in Central-American archaeology,

"I suppose, Padre, you must be quite relieved that no Martians
have turned up here after all/' said Brady, scratching his stubbled
chin. "Wouldn't that have been quite embarrassing? I mean, after
all, what would you do with those little bastards? Make them all
Catholics? And what if they thought so differently from us that we
couldn't communicate with them at all? What if they were terribly
superior?"

"I don't see/' replied Bartou, 'liow any of this would have
changed the basic religious questions. The God whom the church
worships is the God of Mars too. What the church teaches about
Him on Earth would be just as valid on Mars."

"But what about the little bastards?" pressed Brady.

"Your attitude is revealed rather well in the way you speak about
these hypothetical creatures," said Bartou. "Even so, the question
is not without theological interest. It may interest you to know that
the question was already debated in the 19505. A Catholic theolo-
gian (a Jesuit, by the way, if I may point this out) then made the
point that the church would have to rule concerning the state
in which these creatures would be in. If the church finds that they
are in a state of sin (that Is, that in some way they participated in
the fall of Adam or had a fall of their own) then, of course, the
church would seek to convert and baptize them, just as it did with
the Indians that the discoverers encountered in America, If, on the
other hand, it is found that these creatures are in a state of inno-
cence, then, obviously, they would be in no need of the means of
grace at the disposal of the church just as little as the angels would
be. No, there is no great problem here at all."

"But even so/' commented Hirabashi, "even if you can main-
tain this position, wouldn't it bother you that these creatures were
totally unaware of what your jeligion regards as an event of cosmic
significance? After all, your whole religion is based on one little bit
of human history. This looks like a pretty precarious basis even if
you look at it from, say, a Japanese point of view. Would the basis

x6 THE PHECAMOUS VISION

not seem even more precarious if you were staring some Martians
in the face (assuming they'd have faces!)? Would this not raise any
doubts in your mind about the claims of Christianity?"

Barton thought quietly for several minutes. Then he answered:
"I have had, in iny life, a number of experiences where the claims
of Christianity seemed veiy precarious indeed. By holding onto
the church and its infallible authority none of these experiences
succeeded in alienating me from my religion. I cannot see that the
Martian encounter that we're imagining here would bring about a
completely new situation in matters of faith." After a pause Bartou
smiled. "Just imagine the opposite, though! Suppose that we had
found intelligent life on Mars, beings that we could communicate
with. And suppose that they had heard about Jesus Christ, about
the Christian religion perhaps even believed in itl How about
that? Would that settle the question?"

Hirabashi smiled politely, 'Tes, I must grant you that it would,
indeed, settle the question."

Brady had let his attention shift back to the controls the last few
minutes. Suddenly his body tensed. "Look!" he whispered.

Beneath them, lying snugly between two little hills, was a settle-
ment. Maybe fifty buildings, some with small domes over the roofs.
In the center, a little tower. A village, without any doubt. And
they were flying over uncharted areas, hundreds of miles from the
nearest human outpost.

It was perhaps twenty minutes later that the three men in their
space suits walked slowly toward the settlement. The sun was
sinking toward the close-seeming Martian horizon in the west. Its
rays were caught beautifully on the domes of the houses. The men
had come no more than some two hundred feet from the tower
when they noticed the creature standing on top of it. They could
see it clearly now- It was perhaps three feet tall. It did not seem to
wear clothes. Its skin was of a pale, bluish color. And now it raised
what looked like three thin feelers, slowly lifting them toward the
sky, and a surprisingly powerful voice issued from the large opening
in the center of the creature's head;

"LA ILLAH AL ALLAH, MUHAMMAD RASSUHL

ALLAH!"

"What the devil is thafT gasped Brady.

EXERCISES IN ALTERNATION 47

There was a long, long silence among the three men as the
creature in the tower repeated its call. Then Barton answered very
quietly: "It is Arabic. It means, there is no god but Allah and
Muhammad is his prophet. It is from the Moslem call to prayer."

3. Society as Stage (Scholarly Remarks)

THE SOCIAL SCIENCES PRESENT A PICTURE OF SOCIETY AS A STRUC-
TURE OF DRAMATIC FICTIONS. THESE FICTIONS DETERMINE HUMAN
ACTIONS, BUT THEY ALSO CONTAIN THE POSSIBILITY OF HUMAN
FREEDOM*

... that : society is a stage u ugon which men act out
their lives is certainly not new. It is at least as old as Erasmus'
famous question, in The Praise of Folly f **What jglsgLJi. the
v^ftoie life of mortals but assort of comedy, in which the
various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks* walk
on and play each one his part, until the manager waves them

results of the past sixty years or so in

the social sciences have given very strong impetus to what may
well be called a dramatic conception of social existence. It
is also of considerable interest that the crucial contributions
to this conception were made in America. It is often pointed
out that, despite its great achievements in the accumulation
of empirical data, American social science (especially soci-
ology) has been forced to lean constantly on European
theoretical formulations, being apparently unable to produce
anything comparable to these itself. While this is probably
less true today than it was, say, fifteen years ago, there is still
considerable validity to this statement. All the same, the
development that interests us here is almost exclusively an
American one. It may well be that future historians of ideas
will regard this development as one of the most important
American contributions to our thinking about man and
society.

This dramatic conception comes to a mature articulation
t Js paw., called role theory in sociology and social

SOCIETY AS STACK (SCHOLARLY HEMARKS) 49

psychology (although, as we shall point out below 7 the general
picture of man involved here extends beyond the limits of
role theory proper) . There can be little question as to where
we must look for the intellectual ancestry of this development.
There are probably few short pieces of writing that have
exerted as much influence as the short passage entitled "A
Man's Social Self" in William James's The Principles of
Psychology. Here follows the key paragraph from this passage:

"Properly speaking, a man has as many social selves as there are
individuals who recognize him and carry an image of him in their
mind. To wound any one of these his images is to wound him.
But as the individuals who carry the images fall naturally into
classes, we may practically say that he has as many different social
selves as there are distinct groups of persons about whose opinion
lie cares. He generally shows a different side of himself to each
of these different groups. Many a youth who is demure enough
before his parents and teachers, swears and swaggers like a pirate
among his 'tough* young friends. We do not show ourselves
to our children as to our club-companions, to our customers as
to the laborers we employ, to our own masters and employers as
to our intimate friends. From this there results what practically
is a division of the man into several selves; and this may be a dis-
cordant splitting, as where one is afraid to let one set of his
acquaintances know him as he is elsewhere; or it may be a perfectly
harmonious division of labor, as where one tender to his children
is stern to the soldiers or prisoners under his command/' 2

After which James goes on to say that the most peculiar social
self is that related to the image of those we love. In this brief
passage we have in nucleo the basic features of not only role
theory but so-called reference-group theory as well. Much of
American social psychology since James has been concerned
with the systematic elaboration of this germinal insight.

It would be quite beyond our scope in this essay (even if
this chapter is to be a scholarly interlude!) to trace the
development of this conception in American social science, 8
All we can do here is sketch this dramatic conception as it
developed in a number of parallel efforts, after which we can
relate it to the main concerns of this essay.

50 THE FKECAKXQUS VISION

If William James is the ancestor of the conception^ its
fathers are certainly Charles Horton Cooley and George
Herbert Mead. It was Cooley who developed the famous
concept of the "reflected" or "looking-glass self," greatly
sharpening James's original formulation, and then took the
crucial step of relating this concept of the self to the problem
of socialization that is, to the process of training by which
the child becomes a full participant in society. 4 With Mead
the conception reached the dignity of fully elaborated theory
and at the same time its most radical formulation. 5 In the
cases of James and Cooley the development of the "social
self was still seen in some relationship to other aspects of
the self not considered to be "social." With Mead this
distinction disappears. The Asocial self * is the only self that
is empirically available. The self is seen as originating in a
social process. To put this somewhat differently, socialization
is now seen not just as the process by which the self becomes
integrated into society but rather as the process in which the
self is actually produced. This process is carefully traced in
the development of the child, related to a social-psychological
theory of language. With his concept of the "generalized
other/' Inally, Mead provided a precise theoretical formula-
tion as to the way in which society becomes internalized
psychologically. The place of Mead in the development of
the conception under discussion here is crucial With Mead
the drama of society becomes identified with the drama of
the self. Thus a new perspective is given to the old insight
that man is a social being irrevocably and essentially so.

The concept of role is central to Mead's theory and this
concept continued to be the focal point for the further elabora-
tions of the theory. Mead saw as the essential process of
socialization the child's capacity to "take the role of the other"
that is, tlie child's rapacity to react to himself as an object in
the way in which others (to begin with, his mother) act
toward him. In this act of "reflection" (to use Cooley's term)
the image of the self appears. This reaction of the child will
vary with different situations and with the "others" involved

SOCIETY AS STAGE (SCHOLARLY REMARKS) 5!

in these situations. That is, the child learns how to play dif-
ferent roles. As long, however, as these roles are not organized
into a cohesive whole, no cohesive image of the self can
emerge. When the expectations of society toward the child
are organized into a larger unity, the concept of the "gen-
eralized other" appears that is, the child now reacts not only
to specific "others" but to a more highly abstract notion of
what society ("all the others") expects. At this point it really
becomes possible to speak of "self* in any empirically mean-
ingful sense.

Different approaches to social psychology will have varying
interpretations of the precise way in which this process occurs.
It can be said without exaggeration, however, that the basic
pattern as sketched by Mead is today generally accepted by
both social psychologists and sociologists, 6 It might be
pointed out that this appropriation of Mead's basic approach
and concepts can be and has been done effectively by many
who would in no way identify themselves as "behaviorists/*
in Mead's sense of that term. 7 For the social psychologists
Mead's basic approach actually provides the rationale of their
discipline. For the sociologists this approach has been a much-
used nexus with the work of the psychologists. Moreover,
sociologists have found the concept of role highly useful in
understanding the way in which institutions operate and man-
age to integrate individuals into them. a In one of the most
elaborate attempts at system-building in contemporary Ameri-
can sociology, that of Talcott Parsons, the concept of role
occupies, again, a central place within the theoretical system. 9
This sociological use of the concept is a logical extension of
Mead's original use as applied to the individual The role is
an organization of the individual's multifold reactions into a
consistent whole. The individual's total social behavior is
thus seen as a cluster (or repertoire J) of roles. But each role
relates the individual to the roles of many other individuals
meeting in specific situations. Social institutions thus appear
also as clusters of roles. In different words, eacli individual
plays different roles (say, husband, employer, citizen) . But all

f2 THE PHECARIOUS VISION

these roles are not in the same play. Different roles thus relate
the individual to different larger dramatic contexts (say, the
family, the economy, the state). These larger contexts are
the social institutions the analysis of which is the sociologist's
principal concern. With this enlarged perspective, role theory
can now make clear the relationship not only between indi-
viduals and society in general, but between individuals and
specific societies or sectors of society. The roles of military
man and clergyman are greatly different. Ipso facto, the
personalities to be found in the military and in the church
will also tend to be different In fact, each "person" is the
product of a very specific social process.

Needless to say, this extended use of the concept of role has
been especially useful for comparative studies of personality in
different cultures. In this way the concept and the theory of
socialization going with it have been widely used by anthro-
pologists. Role theory in American anthropology has been
most closely associated with Ralph Linton, though others
have taken very similar approaches. 10 Thus, for example, the
concept of "enculturation," as used by Melville Herskovits
to describe the individual's integration into a culture, alludes
in different terms to very much the same process that role
theory concerns itself with. 11 What is perhaps even more
interesting is that such an approach has become increasingly
used to give a sociological dimension to the psychoanalytic
tradition, originally most hostile to this sort of interpreta-
tion. The work of Harry Stack Sullivan is perhaps the best
illustration of a rapprochement between psychoanalysis and a
theory of personality based on Mead. 12

Again, it cannot be our task here to integrate this enormous
amount of material into a consistent theory. This attempt has
been made most ambitiously by Parsons. However, we can
ask, in quite simple language, what this confluence of inter-
pretations means for our picture of man in society. It would
then seem that the picture of society as stage, what above we
called the dramatic conception, becomes a compelling one. It
is certainly no accident that the key concepts of "role" and

SOCIETY AS STAGE (SCHOLARLY REMARKS ) 53

"person" are both of theatrical origin the latter (from the
Latin persorut==ma$k, as used in classical drama) evoking most
suggestively the picture of a "sort of comedy/' as Erasmus
put it. But while Erasmus may well have thought of only
certain aspects of man's life under this category, the picture
invoked here suggests that all of man's life is encompassed by
this stage. It is on this stage that man becomes an individual
in the first place by learning to play parts, then by integrat-
ing these parts into a consistent over-all part which defines
his place in the dramatis personae, all of this occurring on
stage and in interaction with other players. As long as man is
alive he cannot escape the stage. He cannot even think of
himself apart from the stage, because his image of himself
depends upon the images others hold of him. His most in-
timate ideas about himself are still related to that same stage,
because even and especially these ideas depend upon their
recognition by others who are particularly close to him (what
role theory calls the "significant others"). If this recognition is
suddenly withdrawn the whole personality system is threat-
ened with collapse. We have here a vast new perspective on
the old idea that man is a "contingent" beingthat is, that
(unlike God) his existence depends upon others. To come
back to Cooley's picture, society holds up its mirrors to us
and only as these mirrors are available to us can we recognize
ourselves as anything at alL This is true even when we are
alone, because even then we cannot do anything else than
continue the roles we have learned on the stage, playing
them now to an invisible audience within our own thoughts.
Thus even the madman remains on stage. As our parts,
and our selves, depend upon others in the rapidly chang-
ing situations of the social drama, our existence in society is
not only contingent but infinitely precarious. 13 X A1I of^us are
balancing^ our acts li^ standing one on

top of the other. One false move an^Selv&T
com^^cmhing dowii. Thus society is comedy i
tragedy at the same time, for as the acrobats
fliere is real pain and real terror.

54 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

If one was asked in what way the social sciences have con-
tributed most to our understanding of the human condition,
the developments in social psychology just described might
come to mind first. However, there is another important
development that is needed to round out the picture, namely
the perspective on our stage provided by the sociology of
knowledge. While the latter discipline is hardly concerned
directly with what has here been called the dramatic concep-
tion of society, its insights give an added dimension to this as
to any other systematic picture of social reality. Only with
this addition can we become aware of the full implications of
our drama.

Unlike role theory and the developments coming from it,
the sociology of knowledge is of European origin. 14 With an
intellectual ancestry including German historical thought in
the nineteenth century on the one hand/ 5 and heavily in-
fluenced by Marx and Nietzsche on the other/ 6 the problem-
atic of the sociology of knowledge was first defined by the
German philosopher Max Scheler in the 1920S. 17 It was
Scheler who coined the name of the new discipline. The in-
troduction of the sociology of knowledge into the English-
speaking world was largely the achievement of Karl Mann-
heim, 18 who spent the closing years of his life in Britain.

location of ideas, values, beliefs. Ij^eek^^
specific ideas aj related to^spedfic types of social structure. At
the simplest level of explanation this may explain, for in-
stance, why societies that are strongly dependent on rainfall
may develop religions in which rain gods occupy a central
position. While this may be a truism, the analysis of the
relationship of class structure to, say, the moral notions preva-
lent among different classes can be a very complicated matter.
It ought to be emphasized that analysis along sociology-
of~knowledge lines does not necessarily base itself on the as-
sumption that ideas simply emanate from, or reflect, social
structure. Even if this assumption may be made in certain
situations, the sociology of knowledge (unlike most versions of

SOCIETY AS STAGE (SCHOILARLY REMARKS ) 55

Marxism) does not assume that such a relationship exists in
all cases. Rather does it attempt to illuminate the manifold
interactions between social structure and the world of ideas
through careful empirical study. 19 Perhaps one of the most
important values of the discipline is that it provides a highly
fruitful sociological avenue to approach problems of history.
The artificial division between political-social history and the
history of ideas disappears. Even if sociologists will not accept
Marx's view that life produces thought, they will attempt to
relate the way people thinly to the way they live. Confronted
with ideas of any sort, their instinctive question will be "Says
who?* 7 The answer to this question then involves the analysis
of the social location of the one who voices the ideas.

It goes without saying that the sociology of knowledge raises
quite disturbing problems for anyone personally committed to
ideas thus analyzed. A person holding certain moral convic-
tions does not take kindly to the suggestion that they can be
accounted for, or even very much related to, the fact that he
comes from a lower-middle-class background. But there are
serious problems beyond this level of personal irritation. These
problems relate directly to the whole question of the relativity
of values and perspectives on the world indicated in the first
chapter. When we take the example fust given of moral ideas
and class background, the fact of social mobility (people mov-
ing from one class level to another) by itself raises the specter
of what we have called alternation* Again, the ground seems
to shake under one's feet. These problems, however, need
not concern us at the moment. What is very interesting for
our purposes is to relate the Insights of the sociology of
knowledge to the social-psychological dynamics discussed
above. It is rather remarkable that; so far, those writers iden-
tified with the sociology of knowledge have taken little if any
interest in doing this. This may be explained by the fact that
their attention has been focused on broad historical and
structural interpretations, rather than upon the way in which
socially located ideas are internalized and organized in the life
of individuals. On the one hand, the sociologists of knowledge

56 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

have only very limited interest in psychological processes,
while,, on the other hand, the social psychologists usually even
fail to notice the historical dimension of their data. While
there may be good biographical reasons for this state of
affairs, and while there is here a considerable task of theoreti-
cal formulation, it is not really very difficult to bridge this gap.
The perspectives are not contradictory. Far from it they are
complementary. For our purposes a nexus is wanted between
role theory and the sociology of knowledge. It cannot be our
task here to elaborate this nexus theoretically, but we can
look at its implications for our picture of social reality.

If no such possible nexus existed we would have to invent
it. We would contend that such a nexus, however, exists at
least in nucleo in what has been called reference-group theory
in recent American social psychology. It should be added
quickly that, at any rate for most people using this approach,
there is no explicit intention along these lines. Nevertheless,
the kind of problems dealt with and the approach used are
very conducive to establishing this nexus. In other words, we
would contend that reference-group theory provides a useful
link between the understanding of the social location of ideas
on the one hand and the individual's organization of roles on
the other that is, a link between the sociology of knowledge
and role theory.

The term "reference group" was irst used by H. H. Hyman
in 1942 and rapidly became popular after that among social
psychologists and sociologists. 20 The concept of the reference
group was used for a few years with a variety of meanings,
until the situation was clarified by an article by T. Shibutani,
who proposed to limit the concept to one sharply defined
meaning. 21 Shibutani suggests that the concept be used only
to describe "that group whose perspective constitutes the
frame o reference of the actor/' 22 The application of the
concept is quite simple. For example, a person involved in
climbing up the social ladder will feel relatively rich or rela-
tively poor depending upon, respectively, his looking down to
where he came from or up to where he wants to go. That is, if

SOCIETY AS STAGE (SCHOLARLY REMARKS ) 57

the person's reference group remains the circle of his family
and friends which constitutes his background, this will give
him a perspective on his situation different from the one he
would get if his reference group has become the circle of
successful people toward which he aspires and by whom he
hopes to be accepted. The example of social mobility is in-
structive because it shows that the individual changes refer-
ence groups in the course of his biography and (what is even
more important) that he may have different reference groups
at any stage of his biography. It should be clear now that
there can be considerable conflict between the perspectives of
such different reference groups.

If one uses the concept of reference group in Shibutani's
sense, one can certainly admit that one is not dealing here
with hitherto undiscovered facts. It has been for quite some
time a commonplace of social psychology that not only be-
havior and emotions but cognitive processes as well are subject
to group influence. 23 There have been some very interesting
experiments demonstrating how individuals wiU modify their
judgments and accept even palpably absurd interpretations
of events under the pressure of group suggestion. 24 It is
presumably a root fact of social existence that most men
tend to think as their fellows do. This tendency acts as a
powerful psychological instrument of social control, bringing
back into line the individual whose thinking deviates from
the norms set by the group. How far this tendency can go
has been shown by the evidence concerning Communist
"brain-washing" techniques in recent years. 2 * What reference-
group theory does, however, is to relate these psychological
findings directly to the analysis of social structure. Thus, for
example, in the case of American prisoners of war brain-
washed by the Chinese Communists, it now becomes possible
not only to analyze the psychological processes inducing some
remarkable conversions to the captors' points of view, but to
show how these processes relate the individuals in question to
specific social worlds. In this particular example the sociology-
of-knowledge implications are particularly obvious, since the

58 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

conversion now involves a totally different perspective on the
political scene. To return to the terminology previously used
in this essay, our understanding of the phenomenon of alter-
nation becomes rounded out intellectually by a combination
of role theory, reference-group theory, and the sociology of
knowledge. Which rounding out is, of course, the aim of this
chapter.

The sociological propositions attached to "the case of Susie
Q." in the second chapter may now be seen against the
background of a specific development in social-scientific
theory. 26 Role conflict is seen as related to conflict in the
choice between reference groups; these, in turn, can now be
related to the ideological conflicts between distinctive social
worlds, as understood by the sociology of knowledge. Our
concept of alternation may, then, be integrated into the in-
tellectual enterprise of the social scientist. As has already
been said, it would be ludicrous to attempt a full integration
of these strands of theory within the confines of this essay.
The reason for indicating some directions here is mainly to
bear out our previous contention that, especially in America,
the social sciences afford an access to the experience of alter-
nation which we consider to be basic to the perspective on
social existence under scrutiny.

Let us now return to the dramatic conception of society
evoked by role theory. Our consideration of sociology of
knowledge and reference-group theory has (hopefully) added
another dimension to this conception. We now see our actors
once more upon the stage, playing their various roles. But
now we see a Weltanschauung dangling from the end of each
role. Thus the world of ideas too is drawn into our picture of
the social theater. The stage involves not only action and
emotion. It involves thought as well. To put this a little
differently, each role provides a particular perspective on the
entire stage, not only illuminating the present moment in
the play but providing an interpretation of the past and con-
structing projects for the future. Notonjy^^

es, butjve jeminisce and we hope within the

SOCIETY AS STAGE (SCHOLARLY REMARKS) 59

perspectives of these roles. It may even be said that the various
Weltanschquunggn available oh the stage provide the script
for the action. The actors move and speak and think within
the confines of the libretto. Where the theater of society
differs from that on Broadway is in the often inconvenient
fact that it has not one single script but many. The problems
of stage management and dramatic unity occasioned by this
fact are illuminated by the findings of the social sciences.

The relationship of role, reference group, and Weltan-
schauung is particularly observable in the area of the sociology
of occupations. A somewhat neglected field of sociology, the
systematic study of occupations, including that of the ideol-
ogies of occupations, has been for a number of years centered
at the University of Chicago. Everett C. Hughes and his
students have, without doubt, made the principal contribu-
tions to this field. 27 Nor is this fact incidental. Of jJl m the
activities_of life that shape the human being after initial
socialization has occurred, preparing for and carrying on one's
peculation is probably the jnc)st potent. This is true not only
of people in the so-called professions but also (perhaps in
some ways even more so) of people in occupations with in-
ferior social status. Occupation gives the readiest index for
social identification and^tliefef ore, Jor self -identification, as
should be clear from the preceding. "Who are you?" "I am
a palaeontologist/' "Who are you?" *Tm the janitor from
downstairs/' In this social game of being asked and giving
names is located not only a man's self-esteem but also his
self-image (or at least an important part -of it), and beyond
that the angle he has on the world. In other words, occupation
involves not only roles but also ideology.

If one understands this point, quite a new perspective is
given on occupational training. This is now seen as far more
than the teaching of certain information and skills necessary
for the carrying on of the occupation. It is also a novitiate, in
which the new recruit to the ranks of the occupation has his
person molded into the recognized image of that occupation
and is made to absorb a point of view which Justifies the

60 THE PRECARIOUS VISION"

occupation's place in the world. In other words, it involves
"brain-washing" in the double sense of psychological forma-
tion and ideological indoctrination. Needless to say, there
can be no mechanical result of this process. Human beings
are plastic, but not totally so. Also, there are, of course,
differences in the intensity of this novitiate. An Academy of
Hairdressing is not quite like Annapolis. But it has obvious
and important similarities. Coiffeurs and admirals both have
to play very specific roles in society and both may on occasion
have haunting doubts about the legitimacy of their activities.
In both cases, then, ideologies have to be provided which
justify the occupational enterprise. The raw barber and the
raw ensign are provided with the rudiments of a conceptual
system that will allow them to function in their roles effec-
tively. Since the occupation of the ensign involves a much
more elaborate act of stage management (with homicide
included in the bargain, at least as a possibility), it is obvious
that his ideology must be a more comprehensive and more
deeply embedded one than that of the barber. Consequently
it is easier to stop being a coiffeur than to stop being a Navy
man.

As an individual goes through his basic occupational train-
Ing it is not only the formal educational process which
leads him to identify with a certain image (after all, some
occupations do not have such a process even in this time of
professionalization!) but the informal processes of associating
with fellow trainees, those more advanced in their training
and the masters of the trade do this in a much more powerful
way. 28 That this self-glorification does not necessarily involve
a developed intellectual system is well illustrated by the fol-
lowing passage from a study concerning the development of
the professional boxer:

"The boxer is involved in a scheme of relationships and traditions
which focus upon building confidence. The boxing tradition is full
of legends of feats of exceptional fighters. Most gymnasiums have
pictures of past and present outstanding boxers on the wall, and
identification with teem comes easy for the incoming fighters.

SOCIETY AS STAGE (SCHOLARLY REMARKS ) 6l

Past fights are revived in tales. Exceptional fighters of the past and
present are compared and appraised. Second, the individual boxer
is continually assured and reassured that he is "great* and that he
is 'coming up/ As a result, many fighters seem to overrate their
ability and to feel that all they need are lucky breaks' to become
champions or leading contenders. Many get' self-important and
carry scrapbooks of their newspaper write-ups and pictures/' 2 *

This passage, with minor alterations, can be applied to the
training of gangsters or funeral directors, insurance salesmen
or Presbyterian clergymen. One important difference is that
boxers, on the whole, live in a less delusional world than
Presbyterian clergymen, so that the latter require much
thicker ideology.

AsJIughes^has pointed oot, medicine is perhaps the proto-
type of Jh^professioris. 3 ^ The training o a physician thus

strong measure the absorption of a

large jiiass of personality traits ? attitudes and behavior pat-
terns, and, finally, ideological viewpoints. Hughes is quite right
in using the term "medical culture" (anthropologists might
say "subculture") in referring to this complex* Becoming a
physician thus involves an "enculturation" process basically
analogous to that of the little animal-infant who grows up to
be an Englishman. Thus the physician must learn not only to
detect an appendicitis but the right visage to exhibit to patient
and onlookers as this detection is undertaken. Jn otherjVOTjds,
he must ^ no t_ only; _learn mediciBe_but_hqw to be a medical
man. The ideology which this win jsvo|ye_ha bg&a neatly
illustrated by the reactions of the medical profession to the
rarioa4>roposals for national heallh.programs in, jecent years.
Or take a student preparing for the ministry. No matter
what motives originally propelled him into theological study,
the performances of the ministerial role will at first evoke in
most students a sense of embarrassment and uneasiness. The
minister walks around in outlandish costume, and his principal
activities are carried OB in buildings carefully constructed to
be outlandishly different from normal human habitations.
Many of the minister's operations invite a comic reaction

62 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

from himself and others. He uses archaic language, has to
pretend ignorance of commonly known facts of life, is forced
into ritual acts on occasions when others enjoy conviviality.
He must perform sacramental ceremonies that may seem
bizarre to his audience if not to himself throwing water at
screaming infants, feeding wafers into mouths opened wide
under the brim of stylish hats, asking triumphant young
American brides whether they will obey their husbands, burn-
ing mortgages, and blessing patriotic displays. There are few
students of this occupation who will not feel at times that
they are engaged in a circus of preposterous nonsense. It is at
this point that the occupation provides the psychological and
ideological means by which such thoughts can be banished.
For one thing, there is habit. After some years one even gets
used to oneself staring out of the mirror over a Roman collar.
But, more important, there are the others. Surely not all
fellow seminarians can be engaged in a meaningless enter-
prise! "If they don't feel ridiculous, why should I?" But there
are not only other trainees to reassure one. There are the
professors, the bishops and elders and superintendents, the
visiting hierarchs, theologians and teachers of the church-
all engaged in one great conspiracy against one's own sense of
humor; all proclaiming with one voice that what one is pre-
paring for is legitimate, important, nay, sacred. Against this
array of witnesses one's little doubts and amusements disin-
tegrate. The cloak of Elijah can now be put on with the in-
creasingly absolute conviction that not only is it there but that
it firmly belongs on one's own shoulders.

The sociology of occupations gives one a magnificent pan-
orama of the systematic delusions which people will adhere to
in defense of their roles in society. Thus ministers will stoutly
maintain, in the face of all evidence, that what they preach
on Sunday has a real influence on the business decisions made
by their parishioners on Monday. And insurance salesmen
will tell one with probably genuine sincerity that their busi-
ness is akin to the ministry in its humanitarian outlook. Mor-
ticians believe sincerelv that respect for the dead can onlv be

SOCIETY AS STAGE (SCHOLARLY REMARKS) 63

expressed by an elaborate (and, incidentally, costly) funeral
Advertising men believe that motivational research is nothing
but the building of a bridge between manufacturer and con-
sumerthe most democratic of enterprises. Psychoanalysts
believe that charging a high fee is conducive to therapeutic
results. All kinds of physicians believe that defending their
right to charge what the traffic will bear is equivalent to de-
fending the achievements of medicine itself. Farmers believe
simultaneously that the government is a dangerous octopus
devouring our liberties and that it ought to give them fool-
proof guarantees against possible economic loss. And govern-
ment officials believe simultaneously that the budget must be
curtailed and that their staff must be expanded. All such
occupational ideologies afford excellent exercises for the so-
ciology of knowledge. And in each case we can observe the
development of a particular point of view following 4 logically
out of the identification with a certain role and a certain group
of people sharing that role. Occupational ideologies vary both
in terms of intellectual comprehensiveness and in the degree of
distortion they inflict upon social reality. What they have in
common is their basic function of justifying the occupational
enterprise, giving the members of an occupation a particular
picture of themselves and of the world in which they live.

It might be mentioned in passing (to round out the picture
of this comedy) that the occupations whose avowed mission
is the scientific study of society are in no way immune from
this ideological tendency. Thus sociologists whose theoretical
system places great emphasis on functionality will tend to
disregard phenomena of disfunction in society. 31 Economists
will tend to raise to the dignity of natural law their particular
preferences in the field of economic action. 32 Political scien-
tists, fascinated by the intricacies of constitutional analysis,
will frequently verify in their pronouncements the observa-
tion of the German comic poet Christian Morgenstern that
"what may not be ? can not be/' We might also mention social
workers, who will firmly state that the purpose of their under-
taking is to help deviant individuals to adjust to society, and

64 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

who are then deeply outraged when one points out to them
that they are thereby functioning as the kinder arm of the
police forces. If one would go on now and discuss in detail
the factional disputes between different schools of the same
academic discipline, and the surrealistic distortions of reality
to which such vested interests drive their adherents, the
comedy would take on the character of a savage farce. Suffice
it to say that the scholarly cloak of the social scientist is any-
thing but a safe protection against the hazards of ideological
befuddlement.

Nevertheless, as this chapter may have shown, the social
sciences (especially as developed in America) provide some
intellectual tools with the help of which a fairly viable obser-
vation tower on society may be constructed. The unfortunate
fact that instead these tools are frequently used to construct
underground shelters for systematic fanatics, whose last wish
would be to look at the social scene in the light of day, does
not change this. It might also be possible to speculate as to
why this possibility arose in America, of all places, despite the
fact that American society has been preserved from many of
the jolts and shocks that other societies have gone through.
The reason might well lie in the pioneer background (still a
very recent one) of this society. Take the academic carnival,
as an example. When a group of academicians get together in
some brand-new Midwestern college, built on the ill-gotten
gains of some philanthropic railroad tycoon, teaching in imi-
tation Tudor buildings to bored sons of ranch owners aspiring
to become grain speculators when these academicians then
assemble in medieval robes and hand out diplomas in Latin
under such circumstances it is a little easier to see society as
a bag of tricks than amid the time-ingrained fetishism of, say,
Oxford or Cambridge. This does not mean that Oxford is the
real goods, while Iowa can only pretend. Far from it It just
means that the Iowa instructor has a better chance of seeing
the whole thing in the perspective of a county fair than the
Oxford don. Again, it is another story that with greater

SOCIETY AS STAGE (SCHOLARLY REMARKS) 65

maturity as a society America is progressively losing this re-
freshing slant on reality.

It is sometimes remarked that the social sciences produce a
melancholy picture of determinism. For just this reason so-
ciology is possibly in the best position to take over the title
of "the dismal science" once applied to economics. Certainly
there are areas in the social sciences in which a sense of de-
terminism is almost unavoidable. The area of social stratifica-
tion is one such the gloomy recognition that class and caste
determine not only one's economic chances in life, one's style
of life, and the things one may expect to achieve, but also
one's tastes and morals (even to the point of one's sexual
preferences, which one had liked to think of as the most pri-
vate of eccentricities), and even one's chances of health and
(literally) one's life expectancy. Other areas of the social sci-
ences, such as social psychology, constitute a formidable
threat to any highly voluntaristic doctrine of man. Yet we
would contend that, taking the total output of the social sci-
ences as a background to our thinking, it is not so much
determination as fictitiousness which is the main impression.
In other words, it is the dramatic conception of social exist-
ence which we tried to outline in this chapter, The social
sciences present us not so much with man the slave as with
man the clown. The precariousness of personal identity in
society is to be seen the result not so much of iron bondage
but of the dramatic necessities of the stage. It is true that, like
the physical man, social man is a most sensitive creature. Just
a little more heat, or a little more cold, and man dies on the
spot. Just a little social rebuff, a couple of picayune failures,
and the precious construction of self-esteem and self-respect
falls to pieces. But most of the bonds that bind us are invisi-
ble, myths, conventions, fictions agreed upon as rules of the
game. It is not so much these fictions themselves that
bind us as our own social natures. We want to be part of the
game and thus we accept, assimilate, and fervently believe its
regulations. The result of a serious immersion in the social
sciences is that this fictitious universe is breached, if only to

66 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

the extent of a little finger stuck through a colossal zeppelinu
This is why the serious pursuit of the social sciences is a
dangerous undertaking and well deserves the suspicious atten-
tion of all guardians of public order.

Erasmus describes very well what will happen to a man
who shows up on the stage, tears the masks off the actors'
faces, and reveals the comedy for what it is. 33 He will end
up being thrown out on his ear. If this does not happen
inevitably on the stage of society, the reason very often is a
general lack of good police organization. But, quite apart from
this, the debunker in the social sciences might occasionally
ask himself what right he has to even try to disturb the play,
to open eyes, and to point to the Potemkin villages. If one is
fairly pessimistic about social progress (as social scientists will
naturally tend to be), the only plausible answer is a belief in
the possibility of human freedom. And freedom begins with
consciousness.

We may conclude with a picture. If we combine the notion
of determination with that of drama we arrive at a provocative
vision that of the puppet theater. And thus we perceive men
running about to and fro on the stage, going through the
motions of the play all the time with keys turning slowly
and predictably in their backs. But there is one decisive dif-
ference between the puppet theater and the social stage. We
may, indeed, be puppets of society, but with a strange, almost
sinister capacity. For we can stop in our tracks, turn around
and look over our shoulders and perceive the keys turning in
our backs. This act of consciousness is the first step into
freedom. That this act is a possibility is the decisive justifica-
tion of the social-scientific enterprise.

4. The Stage Is Made of Cardboard Paper
(Nonscholarly Remarks)

THE PERCEPTION" OF SOCIETY AS DRAMATIC FICTION MAY BE SHOCK-
ING AT FIRST. FURTHER REFLECTION ABOUT IT REVEAI3 THE
DEEPLY COMIC ASPECT OF SOCIAL EXISTENCE. THERE IS A LIBERAT-
ING QUALITY TO THIS REVELATION.

Any task in scientific understanding is necessarily serious in
its mood. The social sciences are no exception to this. How-
ever, we would contend that this need not mean at all that
social-scientific insights can only be used within a grimly
humorless perspective on the world. We would even go further
than that and argue that the terrible seriousness of much
sociological writing presents not only a literary problem but
also an analytic one. It is not just that such writing is very
boring, but it is quite possible that the total absence of any
sense of humor actually interferes with the attempt to give
an intellectually adequate picture of society. The preceding
chapter has given us a picture of society as a dramatic stage.
To grasp fully the existential import of this picture it may be
necessary to look at its comic aspects in a quite nonscholarly
way. Our perspective on social reality then undergoes a change
of mood. We may now see society as a costume party and its
actors not too far removed from children playing with awe-
some titles. We would argue that an understanding of society
which does not, somewhere and in some form, contain this
perspective is liable to distort the social reality. It should not
be difficult to see why this is so. Society has, indeed, the
character of a costume party. To take the costume party too
seriously means ipso facto missing an essential aspect of social
reality. Sometimes we must laugh in order to perceive.

It is hardly a coincidence that some of the best jokes are

68 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

Jewish jokes. The margins of society have been the Jewish
habitat for many centuries. From a marginal position one
sees things more clearly and therefore more comically! It
may well be that the same social forces which have produced
such a great number of Jewish analysts and interpreters of
society also underlie the phenomenon of Jewish humor. 1
The humorous capacity to put oneself in the other's position,
to look at oneself doubtfully and self-critically, to take all
serious matters with a grain of salt these classically Jewish
characteristics may all be seen as the fruits of marginality.
We would argue that a measure of these is necessary for an
adequate perception of the social stage.

Within American social science the best example of the
intellectual possibilities of satire and the comic perspective
in general is afforded by the work of Thorstein Veblen. How-
ever, we would turn for a moment to the work of a European
sociologist. Georg Simmel has called sociability the autono-
mous or play form of sociation. 2 It is certainly true that at a
party, an occasion of pure sociability, all interaction between
people takes on the character of a game. Like all games, the
game of sociability sets up an artificial universe with artificial
rules. Behavior within this charmed circle is different from
what it is outside, Simmel points out how eroticism becomes
coquetry, communication becomes conversation, ethics be-
comes tact in all these cases sociability creates a play form of
what outside would be an earnest activity. Under the aspect of
sociability, society can be enjoyed as a fascinating pastime, a
"human comedy," in which one is involved but which one
need not take with ultimate seriousness. To quote Simmel:

"The connection between sociability and play explains why socia-
bility should cover all phenomena that already by themselves may
be considered sociological play-forms. This refers above all to games
proper, which in the sociability of all times have played a con-
spicuous role. The expression 'social game' is significant in the
deeper sense to which I have already called attention. All the
forms of interaction or sociation among men the wish to outdo,
exchange, the formation of parties, the desire to wrest something

THE STAGE IS MADE OF CARJDBOAMD PAPER 69

from the other, the hazards of accidental meetings and separations,
the change between enmity and cooperation, all overpowering
by ruse and revenge in the seriousness of reality, all of these
are inbued with purposive contents. In the game, they lead their
own lives; they are propelled exclusively by their own attraction.
For even where the game involves a monetary stake, it is not the
money (after all, it could be acquired in many ways other than
gambling) that is the specific characteristic of the game. To the
person who really enjoys it, its attraction rather lies in the dynamics
and hazards of the sociologically significant forms of activity
themselves. The more profound, double sense of 'social game 9
is that not only the game is played in a society (as its external
medium) but that, with its help, people actually play society* " s

It is clear that the comic perspective on human existence
is particular^ close at hand in this play world of sociability
despite the fact that "comedy" and "play" are categories that
are not synonymous, albeit closely related, 4 This is why
parties afford such a delightful occasion for observing and
participating in the comedy of human foibles, vanities, deceits,
and imagination. While etiquette establishes the ground rules
for the game (and these are obviously different in different
social contexts say, between a cocktail party on Park Avenue
and a church bazaar in Tennessee), there is near-infinite
variation in the combinations and permutations that the
participants at the party may construct. While this chapter is
labeled as nonscholarly, it might be permissible to remark
that an excellent commentary on SimmeFs conception of
sociability is to be found in the writings of Stephen Potter. 5
The world of sociability is an intricate work of art. As such
it is very precarious indeed. What Potter calls "ploying" is
the subtle destruction of the web of understandings that holds
this world together. Etiquette provides the glittering fagade
of this social edifice. The "ploy" is the gentle but deliberate
touch that makes the fagade fall in revealing that it was made
of cardboard paper in the first place.

Take the world of a New York cocktail party* However
sophisticated this world takes itself to be, it has an etiquette
of its own, in which some things are taken for granted and

yO THE PRECARIOUS VISION

some are not. To appear at such a party in the role of a
Southern fundamentalist may quickly cause sufficient embar-
rassment and lack of ease to threaten the whole edifice with
collapse. We might call this an American adaptation of what
Potter calls "religionship." Incidentally, "religionship" is an
excellent method in almost any American gathering to disrupt
the flow of interaction. Almost any social demand can be
effectively countered by saying, *Tm sorry, but this is against
my religious principles" no matter whether this involves
having a drink, telling a bit of gossip, or participating in a
parlor game, people will almost never ask what those religious
principles are. The writer has had occasion a number of times
of falling back upon this gambit and can guarantee a very
high probability of success. Switching the scene to Tennessee,
"religionship" in a different key can be used to destroy sociable
occasions there as effectively. The writer once had the op-
portunity of visiting a large educational establishment operated
by a fundamentalist sect in the South. The young lady who
served as a guide was patently eager to enter on a religious
argument and to start selling the particular message of sal-
vation which her group was offering. It was also clear that
her approach would be tailored according to a system of
categories into which people might be fitted somewhere along
a continuum of the sanctified, the saved, the lukewarm, and
the scoffers. When she finally brought herself to ask what the
writer's church affiliation was, she received the casual reply
that he was a Shfite Moslem. This, of course, prevented the
evangelistic machine from even getting into first gear.

Let it be said quickly that there is no intention here of
advocating this kind of drawing-room Machiavellianism. It is
simply suggested that a little Potterite experimentation will
readily offer an object lesson of what Simmel is talking about
when he calls the world of sociability a precarious artifact.
We would argue, however, that Simmefs conception can be
legitimately extended to a wider field. If Simmel speaks of
sociability and its games as "playing society/' we find here a
startling resemblance with G. H. Mead and the role theory

THE STAGE IS MADE OF CARDBOARD PAPER yi

coming from his work. Simmel is quite correct in viewing
sociability in this light, as Mead is in understanding in the
same way the playing of children. If we bring together Sim-
mers and Mead's perspectives, it would seem that this possi-
bility of "playing society" would not exist at all unless society
(that is, the "serious" society outside the charmed circle
of the game) had in itself the character of a play. Seen in this
wider perspective, the artificiality of the cocktail party is
only of a special kind, not essentially different from the
artificiality of the allegedly more "serious" forms of sociation.
The social skills of the drawing room are actually (mutatis
mutandis, of course) applicable to the "serious" arenas of
life. In this fact lies the essential rightness of finishing schools
and the validity of using the word "social" as it will be used by
its headmistress. All of us learn "to be in society" as part of a
game and by virtue of this training become capable of "going
out into society." The character of society as game, play,
drama is what explains this simple fact. Obviously the game
will be different depending upon the sector of the great stage
onto which we go. But everywhere we shall find the artifacts
which define what the "social" means, everywhere there are
certain very precarious rules of the game, which must be
learned and which can be skillfully broken. And this rev-
elation of the precariousness of social structure is a comic
revelation, It is of one stuff with the comedy of sociability.
It is sociology under the aspect of laughter not a bitter
laughter but a redeeming one, as we shall have occasion to
argue later on.

Society is a stage the stage is made of cardboard paper.
It is these twin proclamations of the comic revelation which
underlie the peculiar fascination which the great swindler
exercises on our imagination. For in the figure of the swindler
is symbolized the liberating message that the walls of society
are full of holes for, lo and behold, the swindler comes and
goes through the walls at will. The figure referred to is not,
of course, the little embezzler or the cautious thief but the
great artist of deception, the social gambler, the Napoleon of

J2 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

impersonation, flattery,, and fraudulence. One might think
here of such literary figures as Balzac's Rastignac, Gogol's
Inspector-General, Gide's Lacfadio and Protos, or Thomas
Mann's Felix KrulL But this figure is also very much part of
the American scene, and not only in literature. There is a
peculiarly American fascination with the really great gambler,
the fixer, the quick-talking sharpie, the confidence man in
his various incarnations and a peculiarly American humor of
surrealistic braggadocio in which these figures are at home.
The salesman who sells a fanner ten elephants at cost, the
revivalist who comes into town arid clears out in a "brand-new
Cadillac, the bland-faced clerk-typist who bamboozles the
colonel and actually runs the regiment all of them beckoning
that the ominous Goliath of society is afflicted with myopia,
trench mouth, and athlete's foot, and that there are other ways
of getting around him than by walking up bravely with a
slingshot. We can call this figure the great anti-Puritan dem-
iurge of the other America, the counter-hero of Horatio
Alger, about whom most Americans learn sooner or later in a
very unauthorized civics course (which, if it needed a text-
book, might use selected works of H. L. Mencken). The
Puritan world was an unusally serious one. Its mores and
morals were protected against laughter with walls as thick as
men have ever devised. It is understandable that its counter-
world was bound to be an unusually picaresque one, with
laughter strong enough to pierce through this dungeon of
earnestness.

The great swindler is a very different figure from the rebel
or from the one who withdraws from society. Unlike these,
the swindler is fully in society. He understands it, operates
fully within it, and has all the skills needed to do so success-
fully. It is not only his morals which separate the swindler
from the average citizen but his perspective on social structure,
l/nlilce the average citizen, he sees through the pretense,
the "as-if-ness" of society. Consequently he has a better
understanding of what really goes on. Thus what to the

THE STAGE IS MADE OF CARDBOARD PAPER 73

average citizen is destiny is for him a possibility. What to the
average citizen is law is for him a technique. All men, as we
have seen, have repertoires of roles which they play on the
social stage. The difference between the swindler and the
average citizen is that the former has a greater control over
his repertoire. There is also a difference in the consciousness of
one's roles. Both swindler and citizen may engage in morally
reprehensible conduct. What is more, both may engage in
propaganda campaigns to demonstrate that what they have
done is really quite ethical The swindler will typically know
that his propaganda is for the consumption of a gullible
audience. The citizen will believe his own propaganda. It
might be added (shelving for the moment the question of
ethics) that the swindler is typically the better sociologist.
Which, incidentally, may be another reason why sociologists
studying so-called "social pathology" can often be of fairly
magnificent naivete after all, they normally follow the prop-
aganda line of the cops.

The world of the erotic would be an excellent field to serve
by way of illustration of the comic perspective. From time
immemorial the erotic has revealed the fantastic fictions
under which we live and thus given us a profound glimpse of
the human condition under the aspect of the comic. One
may, for instance, read Montaigne and then wonder how it
is possible for anyone to even approach this subject in a
mood other than the comic:

"And when I think, as I have done many a time, of the ridiculous
titillation of this pleasure, the absurd, giddy y crackbrained emo-
tions which it stirs up in Zeno and Cratippus, of that unreasonable
rage, that countenance inflamed with fury and cruelty at the
most delightful moment of love,, and then that solemn, stern,
ecstatic mien in so extravagant an action; when I consider besides
that our joys and excrements are lodged together pell-mell, and
that sensual pleasure at its height is attended, like pain, with
faintness and moaning, I believe it is true what Plato says, that
man is the plaything of the gods. . , and that Nature was in a
mocking mood when she left us that most common and most

74 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

disturbing of our actions to make us all alike and put us on the
same level, wise men and fools, men and beasts. The most con-
templative and wisest of men, when I picture him in that attitude,
appears to me a humbug with his wise and contemplative airs/ 76

The essence of the comic is always some sort of discrepancy.
There are few discrepancies as comic as that between spirit
and sexuality. A university professor bent on seduction may
Illustrate this discrepancy very well. Driven by forces that
defy any spiritual interpretation, the libidinized scholar finds
himself in strange and unaccustomed places, suddenly sees
himself acting in ways that would have seemed unthinkable
a few hours before. Yet we are not dealing here with pure
biology without any relationship to the palace of the spirit.
On the contrary. The tremendous intellectual energy, which
perhaps was thrust for years against some mighty mystery of
the cosmos, is now employed with full force to captivate some
female whose mental capacity (in sober moments) our scholar
would have regarded as barely anthropoid. The maneuvers
of seduction now begin, an intricate pattern of ploy and
counter-ploy, of flattery, deception, and self-deception, all
geared to that one instant in which the spirit fades away into
oblivion. Roles are put on and discarded instantaneously. He
is now Don Giovanni, laughing out of a deep throat. But she
is Messalina, who devours Don Giovannis as others eat
breakfast cereals. Quick change. He is now very serious, the
consoler, the one who understands, knows better and more
deeply, would like to help. Quick change on her part. She is
still Messalina, but a tormented one, in anguish, misunder-
stood, driven by things deep within her that she cannot
understand, asking for kindness and help. He has a choice
now. There are, after all, different ways of consoling. What-
ever the outcome, be it bed or altar, it has been the result of
an amazing sequence of gambits which on the Broadway
stage would probably be called quite unrealistic by the critics!
Our so-called sexual and marital mores are built out of
this kind of material. Imagine, then, a totally earnest student

THE STAGE IS MADE OF CARDBOARD PAPER 75

studying the field of marriage and the family! He may read,
for example, that the American family appears to be passing
from a patriarchal through an equalitarian to a matriarchal
pattern. These are still, no doubt, useful categoriesthough
they will usually leave out the picturesque process of ploying
and counter-ploying involved in this. But then he may be
told very seriously that our courtship and marriage system is
of the romantic type. He may then find a very detailed
analysis of the romantic beliefs and norms in question, and
perhaps even a mild suggestion that romanticism is not
necessarily the best basis for a lasting marriage. Since all of
this is quite true, in a way, and since the evidence has been
carefully collected and documented, the student may actually
end up with the conviction that he now seriously understands
the subject. The reality, of course, is that the romantic ex-
perience normally functions as a ratification of decisions al-
ready undertaken for very different reasons, such as wanting
to be respectable, exhaustion from the insecurities of bachelor-
hood, sexual frustration, boredom, or a possibility of eco~
nomic gain. We are not suggesting here that people don't
fall in love or that this experience cannot sometimes be the
primary reason why they get married. We are just saying
that, at any rate for most people, the experience is rather
carefully engineered, consciously or unconsciously. Since
women rationally have more to gain from marriage in our
society, the engineering is more likely to be conscious in theif
case. That is, the men are more sincere in their emotional
entrapments in other words, they are more likely to believe
their own propaganda. Now the real irony of the earnest study
of this subject is that what began as an investigation of
behavior ends up as a guidepost for it. After reading about the
romantic pattern, even those who did not previously feel
the need of this emotional ratification will now "have to
produce it 7 if not to convince themselves at least to con-
vince their public.

Take the case of a girl in her middle twenties employed in
some white-collar capacity in the provinces and beginning to

76 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

panic. She decides to go to graduate school. Upon arrival
there she expresses the overwhelming conviction that she
must enter the particular profession for which her course
is designed to equip her. Within three months she is going
steady in fact, she is falling in love. Love being a volcano
that explodes where it will, it is obviously a coincidence that
this particular explosion is taking place in just the right
grooves of race, class, income bracket, and (last, not least)
marital status of the object. But after four months, on a most
romantic occasion, it comes out that there had been some
misapprehension about the last condition of the intoxication.
It turns out that the man is still legally married, though his
wife (let us assume) is confined to an insane asylum. Under
an administration of tender condolence and sharp questioning
it becomes clear that (let us assume further) he cannot think
of a divorce because of some particularly involved legal cir-
cumstances. At this point, or immediately thereafter, our
young lady realizes (she tells us) that she had not really fallen
in love at all. It had been a mistake. A few months later we
find her engaged. The same torrid experience, of course, but
this time only occurring after every possible aspect of I y 6tat
civil has been prudently explored. She is radiant, she is happy,
she is madly in love. The madness stops short of real sex,
though. This is postponed either until the happiness has
been formally guaranteed by church and state or at least
until the engagement has been announced and it is clear that
its dissolution would be a most embarrassing matter to all
concerned. At that point the romantic pattern culminates in
apotheosis. Now this little story is a boring vignette that
anybody could construct by glancing at the society page any
day of the week. That is exactly the point. We are dealing with
a common American phenomenon, The earnest analysis of
all this is most likely to miss the crucial point that the
romanticism operates as a mode of one-upmanship (or, if you
prefer, as an ideology). Whether the young lady does or
does not believe in the validity of her emotional experiences
is of minor interest here- That question has nothing to do

THE STAGE IS MADE OF CARDBOARD PAPER J*J

with romanticism but with the psychology of deception and
self-deception. It might fust be added that the girl will be
operating more effectively (indeed, be one-up!) if her tactics
are conscious.

The comic world is one of magic. The clown waves his
wand and the walls disappear, the laws of gravity cease to
apply, the gorilla turns out to be a fairy prince. The comic
perspective on social structure makes the same magic leap
into view (while the earnest perspective is frequently taken
in by the magician). We can accompany our girl fust one
step further, to the foot of the altar. It is "five in the after-
noon" on a sunny Sunday. It is a rather nervous bull that is
being led here to his moment of truth. Let us assume that the
key words are pronounced by the ecclesiastical functionary
at 5:15 P.M. This is the magic moment. What would have
been fornication at 5: 10 P.M. is smiled upon by all at 5:20 P.M.
The one magic moment changes all. The girl who now leaves
the sanctuary is a different one from the girl who entered it a
few minutes before. Everyone present believes it and everyone
is quite touched. If we can imagine that the discarded lover
of a few months ago is present in the audience, there is a good
chance that he is deeply touched himself. For a moment he
has a thick feeling in his throat, but then he too succumbs to
the confury of the occasion. Here she comes, a radiant young
matron and he had the audacity to think of her as a little
bitch! Perhaps he catches her eye. In his look there is
recognition, apology, and admiration. The magic has recon-
ciled all.

It is not only the premarital phase of the erotic which
can be seen as a Potterite process of ploying and one-up*
manship. The process continues into the marital life itself 7
of course. It also is very much in evidence in the way in which
the married couple presents itself to the outside world in
what Erving Goffinan has called "impression management." 7
Take the example of a young man, a bachelor, who frequently
associates with a married couple. In this association there
can be a very interesting process of one-upmanship. One

78 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

evening, say, the bachelor arrives just after a particularly
venomous exchange between the spouses. Now, naturally,
marital "impression management" demands that such do-
mestic discords be kept out of sight of the general public.
Whatever has happened in bedroom, bathroom, or kitchen,
the couple emerges into the living room radiating matrimonial
bliss. But on this particular, evening the bachelor's arrival
takes place just too soon after the eruption for all the traces
to be removed from the stage. The husband still has a red
face and is angrily puffing on his tenth cigarettethe other
nine, half smoked and brutally squashed, are crowding one
tiny ash tray. The wife cannot quite switch yet from her
recent shrillness to the suave voice of polite conversation.
What is more, her hand is still trembling and her face is
white, lipstick smudged and hair come loose. Well, on this
evening there can be no doubt about the bachelor being
one-up. Into this scene of squalid domesticity he steps as
the hero of wild and reckless freedom. He brings with him
the aroma of a wider world in which sophisticated men and
women live mature, modern lives. This is how it seems to
him and this is also how he looks to the distraught couple
trying hard to gather about them their social wits. But now
let us take another evening, a few weeks hence. This time there
has been no quarrel. As a matter of fact, a sort of uneasy,
almost comfortable armistice has reigned for several days.
Our bachelor, on the other hand, has just had his third
sexual rebuff in one week. He is thoroughly frustrated and
has been thinking about his age. For dinner he has had to eat
a badly burned steak, and the reason he burned it in the first
place is that he lost track of time standing in front of the
mirror and meditating on his visibly expanding bald spot.
Tonight the roles are reversed. Our bachelor is the poor
traveler on roads of loneliness who is being permitted for one
brief moment to warm himself at this happy hearth. The
one-upness of the couple is clearly recognized by all three
parties. Indeed, so much is the wife one-up that she finds
herself asking solicitously about the bachelor's love life and

THE STAGE IS MADE OF CARDBOARD PAPER 79

mentioning, after his hollow laugh, that there is a new girl
working in her office, not quite young, and hardly a beauty,,
but . . .

In the example of nuptial sorcery above we touched upon
what Is possibly the element of social life in which fictitious-
ness may be obvious more readily than anywhere elsenamely,
the tvorld of law. A person working in a printing press once
remarked that it was a continuing marvel to him how he
could keep on reading books and taking all these words
seriously once he started putting them together on his job.
The writer has had parallel wonderings about lawyers, but
since even gynecologists marry it is perhaps not surprising
that lawyers exist who take the law very seriously. While there
are many human activities in which magic plays an important
part, in the legal enterprise it is the essence of the matter.
Any piece of litigation presents us with the spectacle of
competing wizards struggling to imprison and then magically
transform reality by this or the other formula of incantation. It
is not surprising that the litigants have great difficulty recog-
nizing themselves and what happened between them in either
of the formulae. It is also a great pity that American juris-
prudence has done away with much of the mummery of its
British heritage. One should wear a wig when pronouncing
incantations! Sit in any court, criminal or civil, and you can
see the fictitiousness of society being just about thrown in
yoifr face within a span of a few hours. People are transformed
magically before your eyes. The married are pronounced single,
Bastards are pronounced adopted. The citizen becomes a
criminal in one instant and a convict in the next. Corporate
persons are created ex nihilo and dissolved again into the
nothingness out of which they came. What before was in-
dividual knavery is now corporate finance. What was a light-
hearted misdemeanor becomes a felony And the felony may
fail to be pronounced because somebody mumbled, or failed
to mumble, some words at a crucial moment. This witch-
craft goes on day in and day out. Some of it is benign, even
necessary; much of it, aU the same, operating very much

go THE PRECARIOUS VISION

as voodoo maledictions do. Both the law and the maledictions
can operate only because most people believe in their fictions.
The relatively few cops who can enforce the law are just
about adequate to deal with those who insist on contempt of
court. The voodoo man, for the same purpose, has a limited
supply of poison soups. 8

As soon as we get beyond the strictly technological aspects
of society, there are few of its aspects that cannot be sharply
illuminated in this comic perspective of fictitiousness.
Whether one looks at the world of learning, or the world of
power, or the world of religion everywhere one will find actors
carefully masked and costumed to put over some magnificent
fakery on the rest of the cast A good case in point is the
progress of a young scholar from the status of graduate-
student nonentity to that of academic oracle. What is es-
pecially interesting is that, in many cases, this progress has
nothing whatsoever to do with intellectual prowess or learned
achievement yet may outwardly look exactly like the prog-
ress of a genuine giant of the spirit. Take a young scholar of
moderate intelligence and mediocre imagination but with
some abilities in the art of erudite one-upmanship. Let us
call him Smith. It is his good fortune that he is studying at
the school which houses the brilliant professor Tatarescu. Let
us emphasize again that he is studying at Tatarescu's school
whether Smith ever studied with Tatarescu himself is of
little significance. While a graduate student, Smith had little
use for Tatarescu, indeed belonged to a little circle of bright
young men who condescendingly told funny stories about
the old man and were all agreed that he was far behind the
times in the field. Let us also assume, for the sake of the
argument, that Tatarescu is one of those scholars (rapidly
becoming extinct in the United States) who have little interest
in publication and whose influence is therefore confined to a
rather limited circle. Well, let us allow Smith to graduate,
by the skin of his teeth, and start looking for a job. Through a
friend he receives an interview at an obscure denominational
college in the remoter hinterlands. By a freak of fate it

THE STAGE IS MADE OF CARDBOARB PAPER 8l

happens that the dean who interviews Smith has heard of
Tatarescu, expresses his interest in any scholar in Tatarescu's
field actually coming from Tatarescu's school, and how is the
old man, and so forth. Within the thirty minutes of the
Interview Smith has transformed himself into an avid Tatares-
can. He reserves his right, of course, to differ with the master
on some minor points of interpretation but all, mind you,
within the Tatarescan system. Unfortunately Smith knows
very little about this system, is not even sure there really
is one* But there are several months left before the beginning
of Smith's activities at his provincial seat of learning time
enough to Tatarescanize oneself. A little rummaging in old
journals, some casual borrowing of other people's notebooks
on Tatarescu's courses, perhaps even a little visit of loyal
homage to the master himself, and the task is accomplished.
Smith begins his teaching career. Since he is a young bachelor
and 40 per cent of his students are girls, and since (not
knowing how else to fill fifty minutes of class time) he is
more entertaining than educational, he is a great success at
the college.

In response to his popularity with the students, his grading
becomes progressively more lenient, which in turn increases
his popularity. His first articles are written very modest,
rigidly circumscribed intellectual exercises, mentioning loyally
the author's profound indebtedness to Tatarescu. What with
the printing of these articles and the fact that his students
believe everything he says, Smith is beginning to think that
perhaps there is more to his own scholarship than he sus-
pected. His new assurance is noticed and, since he is popular
with students and since bright young men have a way of
leaving the hinterland, he is rather quickly promoted. With
each national convention of his learned society Smith makes
his appearance with a firmer tread. True enough, it is not
too long before he receives and accepts a call to a not-too-
obscure college in what is definitely not the hinterland. By
the time he has been there a couple of years he has taken
on the demeanor of an academic nabob. Within the limits of

82 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

his capacities lie has developed the rudimentary Tatarescan
system with which he began, but the name of Tatarescu is
now rarely mentioned in his teaching or in his increasingly
frequent publications. In fact, he is rather anxious (if the
subject comes up) to dissociate himself from his former
master. Indeed, it is not long before another young man
(younger than Smith and currently teaching in the very re-
mote hinterland indeed) presents a paper at one of the con-
ventions and actually speaks of the "Smithian approach."
From now on Smith has arrived. The journals are open to
him. At the conventions he moves strictly in buyer circles
(he has now become department head). He writes recom-
mendations, endorses research proposals, reviews important
books, and receives lavish grants. From now on he can say or
write whatever he pleases or, for that matter, say or write
nothing at all. It is well-nigh impossible for him to be dis-
lodged from the status he now occupies. So much for
academic careers.

Another very interesting area of fictions is the world of
power. It goes without saying, of course, that power is an
important fact in any society. It is a fact that some men
always command while others obey. But it is also a fact that
only very rarely is power based on tangible superiority in the
means to impose one's will. Sometimes a man becomes chief
by having a bigger stick. More commonly he just succeeds
in convincing the rest of the tribe that his stick is bigger (or
that he has a stick at all) . This is as true of "civilized" societies
as it is of "primitive" ones. An illuminating example is the
attempts of various categories of social scientists to determine
exactly what groups hold power in a society. The writer
recently had an experience with one such attempt that
illustrates the point. An American sociologist recently made
another study of the organization of power in our society. 9
Among other findings the study listed a number of groups
thought to be high up in the power structure. The writer
mentioned this finding to a fairly important functionary of
one of the groups thus listed. The functionary had not heard

THE STAGE IS MADE OF CARDBOARD PAPER 8l

of the study, was greatly excited and pleased by the report,
and was going to tell other people in the organization. Or,
as a Jewish joke recounts the landing of Columbus in
America, the Indians said: "Thank God, we are discovered!"

It might be pointed out here that this incident does not
necessarily throw doubt on the findings of the study. It is
very probably one of the key characteristics of power structure
in our society that many of the people in it are nervously
uncertain of their position. Viewed from the outside (say,
from the lower reaches in which sociologists have their social
being), the organization of power may appear as a monumen-
tal monolith. Seen from the inside, it may be the most con-
fusing of arrangements. For example, it is highly unlikely
that any one individual can have an intelligible overview
of power in a society as complex as ours. As long as he
cannot achieve such an overview, he cannot be quite sure of
his own position. Putting this in another way, the effective
exercise of power depends upon accurate information. When
an organization of power has to depend on information upon
an immensely complex bureaucracy handling its channels
of information, nobody can really be sure that the com-
munications that land on his desk are not an accidental or
deliberate distortion. The result of this is not only that one
arm of the organization may be in total ignorance of what
another arm is doing. The final result of this situation may
well be that top-level Washington reads the Washington news-
papers to find out what goes on in top-level Washington,
"May well be?" We can only hope that the me of the sub-
junctive is justified!

The suspicion that the world of power is not what we
thought is not only disturbing because we live in an age in
which wrong information can easily lead to global disaster.
There is a more ancient origin to our disturbance. There
remains something in all of us of the childish belief that
there is a world o grownups who know. There must be
because we, evidently, don't know. It is very shocking then
to suspect that the knowers do not exist at all. Everyone is

84 THE PRECAKIOUS VISION

groping around in the dark, just as we are. 10 In the political
area this is, perhaps, the most subversive of thoughts the
dawning realization that the great policy-makers may be as
uncertain as we are as to what their next move is going to
be!

Perhaps it is this suspicionthat the knowers do not
exist which can sum up the general state of mind that
results from the comic revelation that society is fiction, magic,
precariousness. The expertise of all the experts is painfully
synthetic, whether they specialize in love or learning, power
or (as we shall still have occasion to see) faith. Again we
would contend that this attitude is not a one-sidedly op-
pressive one. It also has a liberating side. For while it is
rather bad news to hear that the oracles are ghostwritten by
nervous little men who copy from each other, there is also
some comfort in this news. While it may undermine our
civic confidence it may at the same time restore our trust
in our own stature. If there are no oracles, there may be
something to our own knowledge!

It would certainly be a misunderstanding of this chapter if
it were interpreted as a polemic against the serious study of
society. Far from it. But if, as we tried to show in the last
chapter, the serious study of society presents us with a picture
of society as a dramatic stage, the notion of fictitiousness
which this picture brings with it calls for the comic per-
spective. The revelation of the comic character of society
is important not only for understanding it intellectually but
also for seeking a path of moral action within society. This
will be the problem of the next chapter. As for this one, we
might refer to the German satirist Kurt Tucholsky. This was
the insight which Tucholsky enjoined upon his reader, a
simple one, almost a truism, yet the beginning point of any
understanding of the world of men: Things are not what they
seem. They are different. Quite, quite different.

o Fiction and Alibi

TO TAKE THE FICTIONS AS REALITY CAN BECOME A MORAL ALIBI.
IT THEN BECOMES POSSIBLE TO AVOID RESPONSIBILITY FOR ONE*S
ACTIONS. TO LIVE IN UNPERCEWEB FICTIONS IS MORALLY DANGEROUS
BECAUSE IT LEADS TO ^AUTHENTICITY.

There is a certain tension between a perception of society as
it has been described in the last few chapters and having
any sort of moral hopes about society. If we look at society
with the expectation, however timid, of finding in it some
possibility of moral engagement, we are always prone to the
temptation of taking some particularly attractive fiction seri-
ously after all. When the drums begin to roll many a social
skeptic begins to look at the flag with a newly throbbing
heart. When one's children begin to grow up and ask ques-
tions, one begins to answer them with consideration for their
childish tenderness, then later one begins to believe the
answers one gave if only because one would like one's chil-
dren to live in a world that has moral validity. Or to take
another example, if one has any commitment at all to the
Christian faith, the temptation to find hope in the empirical
church when there is none is almost irresistible. This is why
total cynicism often makes for good social perception (even
though sometimes the total cynic misses precisely those moral
factors in a situation which do not fit into his frame of
reference and which, since man does have moral aspirations,
are often important elements of social reality). One is re-
minded here of the comment made somewhere by H. L.
Mencken to the effect that he had a constitutional incapacity
for outragd This incapacity may be of help if one wants to
see clearly. Like any passion, outrage tends to cloud our vision.

86 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

There are people who share the insight into the precarious-
ness of society but not the moral reaction to the crimes com-
mitted in the name of that society. There are occasions
when the consciousness we have tried to delineate may find
itself in alliance with the cynical consciousness. Situations
in the military may be a good example of this, where a
common "them" can be found in the tyranny which seeks
to impose itself on one's dignity and which one resists in
various ways. The cynic may not only see but act in a way
very similar to "ours." But there are other situations in
which the ways would part sharply. The cynic may see very
clearly what the racial situation is, but it is very unlikely
that his actions will somehow seek to change that situation.
Racial beliefs and racial oppression are for him but another
instance of the pervasive stupidity of society. In other words,
we can often share with the cynic our contempt our moral
outrage divides us. 1 Consequently it is impossible to arrest
ourselves at the stage which our argument has reached in the
last chapter. We cannot limit ourselves to the perception of
the fictitiousness of society, but we must go on and raise
the question of its moral significance. We can only hope
that our perception does not dissolve in this process.

It may be in order here to return to the case of capital
punishment. When a man is processed toward his execution
in our society, great care is taken to make it clear at each
step that nobody involved is carrying out a personal act that
is ? an act for which he is personally accountable. Of course
he is supposed to be accountable in his particular social role
that is, he is supposed to be a good judge, a good prosecutor,
a good hangman but it is maintained that his accountability
is limited to this role, that he is accountable qua judge but
not qua the one, individual, unique human being that he is
personally. Thus a prosecutor may say that, irrespective of his
personal feelings, qua prosecutor he has no option but to
prosecute a defendant to the limits of the law which may
include asking for the death penalty. The jury in the case
may be most carefully instructed to dismiss completely from

FICTION AND ALIBI 87

their minds the issue of punishment; in the drama of the
courtroom their part is strictly limited to determining the
defendant's guilt or innocencehis fate after the verdict is
none of their business. The judge, when he pronounces the
death sentence, is again supposed to act in a strictly non-
personal way; he may, like the prosecutor, say that lie had
no option whatever once the verdict was given and, of course,
in the world of legal fiction he may be quite right. Whoever
else may later be involved in the matter other judges, boards
of pardon, the governor of the state, and the warden of the
prison will all act or fail to act within the same magic
circle of personal nonaccountability. Even the person who
eventually springs the trap, releases the electricity or the
poison gas is supposed to act in a strictly nonpersonal way.
This final fiction is perhaps best illustrated by the practice
in some American prisons of having several electric switches
pulled by several individuals only one switch releases the
current into the body of the man in the electric chair and
nobody is supposed to Icnow which switch it is. The same
idea is behind the practice at military executions of including
blanks among the bullets issued to the firing squad nobody
will know whether his shot contributed to the killing. We
can put the matter quite simply. Nobody did any killing
at all. It was the law itself that killed. But the law, as we
know very well, is incapable of killing. Only men kill. And
a man is dead. There must, then^ be something radically
wrong with the whole argument.

We would contend that the process is one of bad faith
from beginning to end. It is a lie that prosecutor and judge
have no option. At the very least they have the option of
resigning from their positions. They also have the option of
defying the law. It is a lie that the jury can dismiss from
their minds the question of punishment. At each moment of
the trial the matter of the life or death of a man lies in their
hands and they know it. It is a lie that their positions dictate
to the governor or the members of the pardons board what
course of action they must take. These positions are defined

88 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

arbitrarily by men and men are capable of redefining them.
No matter what method of deceit is finally used in the
execution itself, it is a lie that nobody is doing any killing.
A man is dead and his killers are known. They are Mr.
Smith, the district attorney; Mr. Brown, the judge; Mr.
Jones, the warden and so on, by name and most personally
indeed, to the executioner. This is the reality. The rest is
fiction, mythology, alibi.

It is interesting that many people who would be shocked
by this interpretation would have wholeheartedly endorsed the
verdicts of the trials of Nazi war criminals. The position
taken at these trials was that the Nazi legal system could not
be used as an alibi for carrying out Nazi criminal orders. It
is important to point out here that, strictly speaking, what-
ever the Nazis did was within the law their law, that is.
Thus the jurisdiction of the SS was carefully defined legally
as against the jurisdiction of the German courts; at a certain
point, the Jews were carefully removed from the jurisdiction
of the German courts into that of the SS; within the SS
organization there were carefully worked-out regulations and
competences. Of course, at some stage of the game somebody's
competence included certain gas chambers but it would ob-
viously be ludicrous, under the law, to hold him personally
accountable for this bureaucratic exigency. Let it be em-
phasized most strongly that the differences between an SS
colonel and our warden in an American penitentiary, many
though they may be, do not touch upon the point at issue
here. Men wfto kill are responsible for their actions, If there is
justification of the actions, they as men must provide the
justification. They cannot fall back upon a social alibi. Those
denying this interpretation might point out that this im-
poses a terrible burden on individuals that, perhaps, we
might find nobody to do certain unpleasant jobs if this point
of view was generally adopted. This is quite true and that is
exactly why these fictions were concocted. But our concern at
the moment is not with the recruitment of judges and
prison guards. The burden of personal responsibility is not

FICTION AND AUBI 89

imposed by a certain interpretation but by the reality of
human existence. The question is not whether such a burden
is pleasant but whether it can be safely denied. Finally, it
might be argued more broadly that legal fictions are probably
a necessity of society. This, again, may be quite true. All of
us are involved in this great game of social make-believe. All
of us will have the chance of playing certain parts with
relish. We become grown-up men, husbands, admirals, arch-
bishops, boxing champions, and judges of the supreme
court of errors. Much of this game can be harmless. The
moral dimension becomes relevant when the game begins
to involve murder. The task of conscience at that instance is
to tell the children to stop playing.

Insofar as the writer of this essay understands Sartre, it is
intended that the term "bad faith" be understood in a sense
analogous to Sartre's. 2 The writer hopes that Sartre's meaning
is not distorted too far if the term is used here, within the
context of our argument, as indicating the use of social
fictions for the providing of moral alibis. In other words, we
understand a man to be in bad faith who excuses himself
by pointing to his social role and to the ideologies in which
the role is enveloped. Still very much conscious of his
philosophical incompetency, the writer also feels that Hei-
degger's concept of social generality as expressed in his term
"das Man" is also very relevant to our argument 3 It is now
in order to develop this within our argument

The possibility of bad faith means that the fictitiousness of
society is morally significant. Bad faith means that society
assists us in hiding our own actions from our awareness. The
role becomes a moral alibi. It goes without saying that this
possibility is inherent in the most basic way in our social
existence. Indeed, if this possibility did not exist the process
of socialization could not take place. Already a very little boy
will put on his cowboy uniform and inform his mother that
he is now speaking to her not as little Johnny but as Davy
Crockett. As our little boy grows up he only continues the
same operation in a more serious vein that is, while he

90 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

knew very well that he was putting on an act when he
addressed his mother as Davy Crockett, he now seriously
believes himself that a magical change occurs when he speaks
to her not as her son but as a patriot, a priest, or a representa-
tive of other broader interests. The reason why it is difficult
to be a prophet in one's home town is that most mothers
are struck by the similarity between the old and the new
masquerade there goes Johnny with a new hat! But others,
who cannot remember little Johnny playing at being an
important person in the big world, are ordinarily quite ready
to be impressed. Take, for example, a man who is the perfect
figure of a judge. Each gesture, each word, is in perfect
harmony with the role upon the bench. In fact, one is tempted
to say that this man is truly his role. If we later find out
that our man liked nothing better as a child than to enact
the most sinister occasions of a judge's work, we may see
things differently. This illustration, by the way, is taken from
life. In 1952 a British newspaper contained the following de-
lightful episode from the boyhood of Lord Goddard, then
Lord Chief Justice and one of the staunchest defenders of
capital punishment:

"When he first went to Marlborough, it was apparently a school
custom to make every new boy sing or recite in his dormitory.
Called upon to sing, the future Lord Chief Justice is said to have
surprised the other boys by chanting in a piping voice: 'You will
be taken from here to a place of execution and hanged by the
neck until you be dead. And may the Lord have mercy on your
soul/"*

As we know, this little boy had excellent opportunity later on
to carry out his fantasy. If such biographical information does
anything it sharply illuminates the bad faith of the role being
used as a moral alibi. It makes clear that, after all, it is the
man who chooses, accepts, or at least assents to the role. He
cannot escape the responsibility of his own choice. When he
tries to escape he is forced to lie.

The astonishing thing is that commonly not only is it the

FICTION AND AJLIBI <ji

oppressor who envelops his actions in the fictions of his
role, but the victim is seriously expected to do the same.
What is even more astonishing is that sometimes he fulfills
this expectation. This can again be illustrated by certain cases
involving the death penalty, cases in which the intended
victim succeeds in keeping himself alive for a number of years
by using every legal trick available to him or his lawyers.
There are many people, especially in the legal profession, who
are morally annoyed by such behavior and whose attitude
toward the prisoner is stiffened because he carried on these
evasive tactics. Recently, in refusing another appeal from one
such prisoner, a state supreme court blamed him for play-
ing a cat-and-mouse game with the courts and thus making a
mockery of the legal process. It may be worthwhile to
imagine how the prisoner ought to have behaved in order
to have the respect of these august gentlemen. He might
perhaps have written a letter to the court, saying that he very
much wanted to live or even that he was innocent of the
crime, but that he had a very high regard for due procedures of
law and, knowing very well the overcrowded condition of
our courts and the difficult existence of judges, he now pre-
ferred to be executed quickly and respectably, without further
ado. Put in these terms, such a reaction might seem absurd,
but even such instances occur in real life. Preceding the
execution of a prisoner convicted of having been a Russian
spy by a German military tribunal during World War I, the
man spent the major part of the time left to him preparing
himself for the execution as one would for a parade. He even
read the German military manual containing the instructions
for executions. When the day came he was ready. He died
not only bravely but correctly literally by the book. We may
take it for granted that he had the full respect of the young
officer who fired the last bullet into his neck. Here bad faith
is not an alibi from guilt but rather an alibi from terror. Both
torturer and victim are in bad faith. The torturer says, "I am
not killing a military execution is taking place/' The victim
says, "I am not dying a military execution is taking place/*

92 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

The bad faith of the victim is one of those merciful veils
which nature often lets fall over the consciousness of animals
in torment. The bad faith of the torturer is one of the few
convincing arguments for a doctrine of hell.

The following episode might serve to illustrate that such
collusion in deceit is not inevitable. During the French col-
lapse of 1940 the story has been told of an anti-Nazi refugee
trying to get away from the advancing German troops and
being stopped by a French gendarme. The latter examined
the refugee's papers and found that he had no police permit
to be in that department, thereupon told the refugee to
accompany him to his station. The refugee tried to argue
with him, pointing out that the Germans might arrive
any moment, that if they caught him it would mean his
certain death* then added: "And you are a Frenchman too.
What is achieved if you help the Germans to kill me? 7 '
To which the gendarme replied: "We shall both have the
satisfaction of knowing that you died in accordance with
the laws of the French Republic/' He then looked at his
watch, advanced it several hours, and added: "I note officially
that it is now 5:05 P.M. I go off duty at 5:00. I am now
off duty. I shall now tell you the best way to get out of here."

Modern bureaucratic procedures provide an excellent oc-
casion for the denial of personal responsibility. However, it
would be an error to put all the blame on bureaucracy or to
regard bad faith as a peculiar modern invention. This is
quite fashionable today, in line with the painting of horror
frescos depicting "mass society/' but it is hardly accurate.
Bad faith, in the sense here described, must have been an
accompaniment of the earliest human societies. While the
modern hangman has, as it were, a more streamlined model
of the old thing, the most savage chieftain chopping off a
head in the name of a demon of revenge possessing his body
is practicing bad faith in just the same sense. We are dealing
here with original sin indeed that is, sin presumably dating
from the origins of the human adventure. It is most difficult
to imagine any society not containing the possibility of bad

FICTION AND ALIBI 93

faith. Perhaps bad faith is one of the essential ingredients
of being human. Which is anotHer way of putting what was
once expressed by someone who defined man as the animal
that can hide.

It is not necessary to go to the extreme situations of human
life in society to see in operation this mechanism of evading
the moral questions. For example, the ideologies of occupa-
tions provide very much the kind of alibi in economic life
that national and military creeds do in wartime, or that the
law does in the administration of what is commonly called
justice. "Business is business" sums this up fairly well. It
means that little Johnny is putting on one of his magic
hats and announcing: *Tm not speaking to you now as John
Smith. I'm not speaking to you either as your friend, your
neighbor, and your prospective brother-in-law. Fm speaking to
you as chairman of the board of this company. As such, I have
no option but to say to you what I just said/' At which point
the knife falls. The interesting problem, once more, is con-
tained in the words "no option." Now it is perfectly true
that there are economic necessities over which our man has
no control. It may, for example, be true that he can only stay
in business by dumping inferior products under threat of
some kind of economic blackmail. That's the way this business
is, there's nothing to be done about it, and the alternative is
bankruptcy. True enough. This does not change the fact
that the man has first of all chosen to go into this kind of
business, probably knowing what its economic realities are.
What is more important, it is he who accepts and assents to
the so-called economic necessities. If the alternative to black-
mail is really bankruptcy, then it is he who chooses not to
go bankrupt. Now it may quickly be said that the man could
never make the other choice, that he has a family to support,
stockholders to face, and so on. Again, true enough. But
then let him say honestly that he is performing blackmail for
the sake of his family and his stockholders. In other words,
between the possibilities of blackmail and bankruptcy, he is
opting for the former. It need not be our concern at the

g4 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

moment what the moral implications of this choice are. It is
enough to point out that the alibi "no option" will not with-
stand even a cursory examination.

To put this in a different way, all our actions have a price.
It is we who decide at what point we agree to be bought. As
in the story of a conversation between a very sophisticated
gentleman and a very respectable lady at a party. They are
talking about prostitution, "Well/' says the gentleman, "just
for the sake of our argument, suppose I offered you $1000
would you spend the night with me?" The lady, smiling
coquettishly: "Who knows I might very well!" The gentle-
man; "Now suppose I offer you $10 for the night?" The
lady; "But what do you think I am?" The gentleman: "We've
already established what you are. Now we're just haggling
over the price/'

Bad faith is so important because it is the other side of
freedom. Bad faith is the denial of freedom, because it de-
ludes men into thinking that they have no choice in a
situation. In reality there are very few situations indeed
where the words "no option" are literally true. At the very
least, as the Stoics knew, there is the choice of death. If
a man chooses not to die he is ipso facto opting to continue
living under the particular circumstances of the situation.
But again it is not necessary to demonstrate the point by
going to the extreme case in which suicide is the only
free option. Most of the situations in which men speak of
necessity are actually cases of choice. If necessity means that
I must do certain things to succeed, then it is I who choose
not to fail. If necessity means doing this if I am not to be-
come an object of ridicule, then it is I who choose to save
my face. In other words, the necessity is that only insofar as
I recognize it as such. Bad faith is the denial of this fact.
Now it would certainly be an exaggeration to say that social
perception of the kind delineated here precludes bad faith.
It is safe, however, to say that it makes it more difficult. The
most dangerous people are the total believers. Insofar as the
comic perspective on society, the vision of society as stage

FICTION AND ALIBI OC

and precariousness, makes total belief very difficult, such
perspective mitigates the more murderous varieties of earnest-
ness. In other words, there is an ethical dimension to the
precarious vision.

Sartre's concept of "bad faith can be used to show how the
social fictions operate to provide a moral alibi. There is another
very important function which these fictions carry out, namely
to provide a way by which the more terrifying aspects of
existence can be avoided. It is this function which can be
described by Heidegger's concept of "das Man. 9 ' The German
term is difficult to translate. "Man" is used in German like
the French "on"; in English the closest analogue would be
"one/' as used in sentences like "one would never do this/*
"one might feel/ 7 and so forth. That is, "das Man" refers
to a social generality which cannot be expressed in any of the
proper personal pronouns. In one of his test-known arguments
Heidegger argues that this generality is designed so as to
evade confrontation with the reality of death. 5 In other
words, the reality of death is distorted by making it an
occurrence of everyday life. The way in which people com-
monly talk about death, or even comfort the bereaved, well
illustrates this. "We all have to go," said in a tone of easy
resignation the "we all'' is precisely "Man" it means every*
body, but really nobody, and specifically not myself. I am
not "we all." By subsuming my own death under this gener-
ality I effectively evade the stark truth that I myself wiH die
my own, very personal, very unique death. This also is bad
faith. The same is true of the comforter who tries to have
one who grieves transpose his sorrow onto a general plane.
Heidegger himself points to what in world literature is possibly
the most penetrating picture of this uneasiness and dishonesty
in the face of death Tolstoy's story about the death of
Ivan Ilyich. Authentic existence, according to Heidegger, is
possible only as one acquires the courage to face one's death,
to 'live toward death," which includes the courage to face
one's fear of death. 6

Without seeking to interpret Heidegger's philosophy, it

THE PRECARIOUS VISION

would seem that this concept is singularly applicable to our
argument here. We would contend that the social fictions we
have been discussing function as precisely this generality.
We would also contend that the concept of bad faith is fully
applicable to the use of this generality to avoid the terrors
of our existence. Certainly this is true of the terrors of death,
as Heidegger points out. The way in which death is handled
in America today could serve as an excellent example of this,
There is, as it were, a conspiracy between the actuary's and
the mortician's ways of looking at death, as a result of which
the truth of death disappears. However, it is not only this
one terror which can be avoided in this way. The same is
true of any experience of ecstasy, using that term in its
original meaning of ekstasis standing outside oneself. There
are various situations in life in which it may suddenly seem
to us that we have stepped outside the everyday course of
events, that we are really confronting existence. This can
be an experience of terror, though it need not always be.
This writer has not fully understood why Heidegger gives
such a privileged status to the one ecstasy of confronting
my own death. There are other ecstasies of horror, awe,
guilt, but also of sudden insight, pleasure, joy. What all
ecstasies have in common is breaking through the routine,
everyday, taken-for-granted course of our life. Society functions
to prevent this break-through. It is especially its fictions which
are designed for this purpose,

Generality shields us from the uniqueness of our existence,
both the unique terror and the unique freedom of being our-
selves. During World War II there occurred a tragic accident
in the writer's circle of acquaintances. A little boy of about
three years, the only son of his parents, fell off a roof and
was killed. The family was Jewish. An elderly rabbi expressed
his condolences to the father of the boy, then added: "And
this at a time when we need every Jew!" It is not our con-
cern whether the rabbi's comment was said in kindness or
how the father reacted to this attempt at comfort. Our point
is that we have here the kind of generalization which we feel

FICTION AND ALIBI 97

entitled to call bad faith. For it was not "a Jew" who died
it was this one, unique, irreplaceable child. To suggest to the
bereaved father that he transpose his unique anguish onto
the plane of political and ethnic considerations was an act
of bad faith, however well meaning it may have been. Again,
as in the example given above of the Russian spy who died
correctly, it is quite possible that such bad faith is merciful.
That is not the point. Those who die "as soldiers/* "as
Communists/' "as Jews" die in bad faith to the extent that
this "as" becomes a fiction which vicariously dies for them.
In truth it is not "a soldier" who dies, or "a Communist,"
or "a Jew." Only men die. Their anguish, their terror,
and their courage cannot be captured in the social categories.
Perhaps the deepest obscenity of society lies in the fact
that it continues to try. Unlike their mammalian relatives,
few men are permitted to die "off stage/ 7 To the last moment
the social comedy continues all around them, and, what
is more, they are expected to participate in it. "He died
welL" There was perhaps a time when this referred to some-
thing religious. Today it generally means that he died not
only with a minimum of pain but also with a minimum of
annoyance to those who had charge of his care.

One does not have to be an existentialist to perceive that
existence lurks with terrors. Thrown into the world in one
brief moment of consciousness, we are surrounded on all
sides by mystery which includes our own destiny and the
meaning of a universe not too obviously constructed for our
comfort. From the first reassuring smile of the mother bend-
ing over a frightened infant, society provides us with structures
in which we can live with a measure of ease and which
announce to us every day that things are in order. Busying
ourselves at the warm, well-lit spots of the marketplace we
can forget the howling visions of the night. Existence is
leaning over a bottomless abyss. Society is the Potenikin village
that shelters the abyss from our fearful eyes,

It happens sometimes in the middle of the night that we
wake up and cannot fall asleep again. It is in such hours that

gg THE PRECARIOUS VISION

strange thoughts may come. Our own existence and identity
suddenly cease to be matters of course, but highly doubtful
fabrications in a world constantly threatened by nighmarish
transformations. If we are what is regarded as sane, well-
balanced individuals there are very definite ways of coping with
such experiences. We tell ourselves very forcefully who we
are. Nonsense, we tell ourselves, we have nothing to do with
the faceless horrors of our dreams. There can be no ques-
tion about our identity. We can promptly give name, ad-
dress, profession, marital status. If necessary, we can wake
up wife and children, who will laughingly confirm the identi-
fication. We can switch on the lights and walk around in our
house, We call this process of recollection a coming back to
reality. We would contend, however, tibat it is a very special re-
ality that we come back to in this way. It is the daytime reality
of society as taken for granted. And it certain is reality. But
let us not too easily dismiss the nighttime from the domain
of the real. Names, addresses, professions, and wives have a
way of disappearing. At the latest it will be in the confron-
tation with death that we will be thrown back into that night-
time world where identities are questioned.

Society gives us names and identities. It provides the proc-
esses by which these are appropriated and sustained. Yet we
are fleeing from the truth if we think that these precarious
appellations constitute all there is to our existence. Such flight
is bad faith. It is one of the most common of phenomena.
Again we ask, "Who are you? 3 " And we get the answers. u l
come from a leading Boston family." "I am an anarchist/'
**J am a Methodist bishop/' "I am a recipient of the Nobel
Prize/' "I am John Smith/' True enough. Yet all these are
shorthand descriptions for the purposes of stage manage-
ment What if the stage collapses? And what if I have to
leave the stage?

To live correctly means to live in accordance with one's
dramatic assignment One can, of course, appear to do so
but really live one's own life behind the wings of the stage.
That is simple insincerity, not bad faith. Our interest is in

FICTION AND AUBX gg

the sincere man, the one who honestly believes himself to be
his role. There is the military man who avoids the perils of
tenderness by being a soldier even in bed. There is the bishop
who avoids doubts and anxiety by wearing his sacred robes
even into his dreams. There is the political assassin who
thinks of himself as an instrument of history. But there is
also the businessman whose entire life becomes part of his
economic enterprise or his wife whose existence derives
significance only in terms of her status in the female under-
world of her husband's circle. And so on. What all these
instances of total identification with a role have in common
is the avoidance of ecstasy. These individuals never confront
the universe as men, nakedly, openly. They always hide in
the costumes of the social carnival. They cannot face the
world except as officers, priests, political devotees, insurance
salesmen, or faculty wives. That is, they cannot face the
world at alL As a line from a German cabaret skit puts it, in
the mouth of a subaltern government official: "When Fm
on duty Fm a swine. Fm always on duty/" Arthur Miller's
Death of a Salesman gives us a contemporary picture of
the final tragedy of this sort of bad faith.

Freedom is at best an approximation. None of us is free
to abandon the stage except by way of that one experience
when omnes exeunt. But insofar as a measure of liberation
is possible, it involves a measure of seeing through the fie-
titiousness of society. This requires ecstasy. There are different
varieties of ecstasy. We would contend, however, that the
experience of alternation., the perception of the fictitiousness
and precariousness of society, the perception of society as
stage, that these are capable of providing a very significant
kind of ecstasy. We would contend again that the essential
quality of this vision is comic. The precarious vision strips
the general of his uniform, the bishop of his vestments, and
tells the status-conscious wife of a vice-president that she
is must less important than she thinks and, therefore, freer
to be happy. The precarious vision of the social world is, then.

PRECARIOUS VISION

one of the most dangerous enemies of bad faith. In its
perspective the excuses of bad faith dissolve into preposterous-
ness. In their place appears once more the possibility of
freedom.

PART TWO

Burden of Zion

6. Religion and the Social Fictions

RELIGION AS A SOCIA3L INSTTTtmON TENDS TO GIVE AN ILLUSION OF
CERTAINTY TO THE DRAIVfATIG FICTIONS. FOR THIS REASON, RE-
LIGION AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION IS MORALLY DANGEROUS. RE-
LIGION CAN BECOME THE SUPREME FICTION THAT SANCTIFIES ALL
THE OTHER FICTIONS,

If one leaves aside the Marxist tradition, the two most im-
portant social-scientific approaches to religion are to be
found in the works of Einile Durkheim and Max Weber. 1
Durkheim's approach not only has had a predominant in-
fluence on the French school of sociology but in many ways
can be regarded as the ancestor of functionalisin in Anglo-
Saxon anthropology and sociology. 2 As in the discussion of
social-scientific materials in Chapter 3 of this essay, it is not
our intention here to make a critical or exhaustive presentation
of these developments in the study of religion- Our concern
is only to identify certain elements of the social-scientific
understanding of religion, in order to see more clearly how
religion is related to the social fictions which we discussed
in the preceding chapters.

Durkheim's conception of sociological method emphasized
strongly that social phenomena had to be studied as such, as
phenomena mi generis. This means, for example, that psycho-
logical analyses will never arrive at an understanding of society.
In accordance with this general approach, Durkheim was
not very much interested in the psychological processes in-
volved in religious beliefs and practices. Religion is a social
phenomenon, hence it must be studied as such. And the most
important social consequence of religion is that its beliefs and
practices unite into what Durkheim called a "moral commu-

RELIGION AND THE SOCIAL FICTIONS 103

nity" those who adhere to them. Durkheim went further than
that and, in sharp distinction from other contemporary theo-
ries seeking to explain religion scientifically, maintained that
society itself was both source and ultimate object of all re-
ligious devotion. Not only is religion an essentially social
phenomenon, but what the religious devotee is ultimately
worshiping is society itself, or rather its most awesome values.
There are very few social scientists today who would defend
this extreme position, and most would feel that at this
point Durkheim's philosophical presuppositions tended to
run ahead of his scholarly judgment 3 However, the im-
portance of Durkheim's study of religion lies not in this
extreme position on the ultimate substance of religion but
rather in the attention it drew to its actual functioning
in society. Not only Durkheim himself but his disciples in
the French school of sociology were greatly interested in what
they called the "collective representations'' of society. They
stressed the fact that society could not be understood except
with a grasp of the web of meanings, ideas, and values (that
is, the ''collective representations 7 ') which holds it members
together. These "collective representations," taken together,
constitute the "collective conscience" of a society the basic
moral consensus without which it would not exist/ In this
collective conscience religion plays a crucial role. The deepest
levels of the collective conscience are those which are sanctified
through the religion which the society adheres to. By thus
putting under its sanctions the most important elements of
consensus* religion makes possible a moral community, and
thus makes it possible for society to exist at all. Religion is
not an accidental element of society, relating itself here and
there to other social elements. Religion is essential to society!
so much so that one could say that without religion in some
form society could not exist. j

Ajjigerent way of putting this is^by saying that the^BBSian
social function of religion is sym^^J^f^itio^^It is this
aspectlSF^ become guiding in the

functionalist approach to religion, both in British social

104 THE PBECARIOI7S VISION

anthropology (with Bronislaw Malinowski as probably the
most outstanding exponent of the approach) and in Ameri-
can sociology (where Talcott Parsons has done most to apply
a functionalist conception to the study of religion). What
this means can be put quite simply (although, of course,
social scientists specialize in putting things in as complicated
a way as possible!). Society is viewed as a whole, a system
of assumptions, conventions, and procedures shared by a group
of human beings. The question that interests the functionalist
is how this system hangs together. Any aspect of the society
he studies, then, he will study in terms of this question.
That is, he will aslc in what way this aspect helps keep the
society together. Whether the aspect being investigated is a
belief or a custom or a particular technique, this question
will always be asked. Now, quite obviously, not everything
that goes on in society is functional in this sense. Although
early functional theory tended toward this assumption, later
developments took into consideration that there are things
that happen which actually tend to disrupt society (that is,
which are disfunctional) and others which are irrelevant to
the maintenance of the system. If we return for a moment to
our picture of the stage, we can imagine that most of the
actors, most of the time, will act in such a way that the play
can go on;" All the same, it happens once in a while that
individuals or groups of actors, deliberately or by accident,
do things which tend to break up the original drama. What
is more, sometimes a little boy comes in from the wings
and sits down in a corner and blows three times into a
trumpet He does this because he feels like it. As far as the
main dramatic action is concerned his little sideshow is
irrelevant. That is, it is neither functional nor disfunctional,
It remains true that, on the stage of society, there will be a
modicum of dramatic cooperation most of the time, thus
giving validity to the basic question of the functionalist.
LeIig*ou;"" then, fiajH^ona^nteratin the actors* values

^ in such a way that they are made capable of co-
operation. Religion lets the actors believe that their playls

RELIGION AND THE SOCIAL FICTIONS 105

ultimately , right^^an^L^t^oi^^^^ : ^_ufe. f thj^_belief the
play is facilitated^ Or one could put the same thing by
saying that religion provides the imprimatur for the libretto
or the fiat spectaculum for the whole operation.

This primary social function of religion also relates it in
a very important way to the apparatus of social control,
Sociologists speak of social control, a term coined by the
American sociologist E. A. Ross, 5 to refer to the various
techniques society develops in order to bring into line its
recalcitrant members. Such techniques can be external de-
vices, ranging from killing to social ostracism or gossip. How-
ever, as both role theory and the psychoanalytic approach
have conclusively shown, the most important controls are
internalized. In the process of socialization the value structure
of society becomes the inner value structure of the individual
conscience. Essentially thgjgmej^^

refers to the "generalized Qt^ speaks of

just c

an external reality J^^J^^sbe^
inner ^bFrNo^ ongoing society can dispense with such a
process of moral internalization. The external techniques of
social control can be economically applied only if most people,
having successfully internalized controls, stay in line quite
naturally. To put this a little differently, a few hundred
policemen are sufficient to preserve law and order in a city
with many thousands of people. Why? Because most of
these people will behave in a legal and orderly fashion in
any case, even if they never see a policeman or think of one.
But instead of the external cop they have a little, invisible
cop sitting squarely in the middle of their heads. This is the
metaphysical gentleman whom Freud called the "censor."
This internal police force is not only more economical but
far more efficient than the flesh-and-blood troopers. "Without it
any society is doomed, even if it uses the most brutal methods
of physical repression.

The purpose of social control is to keep society going de-
spite the occasional foibles and iniquities of its membership.

1O6 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

One could say that social control has three lines of defense.
The first line of defense is consensus, the common taken-
for-grantedness of moral prescriptions and proscriptions,
which, if it functions well, makes social control in its proper
sense unnecessary. There will be no stepping out of line and
thus no need for the techniques of bringing anyone back into
line. The second line of defense is the internalized social-
control machinery if one prefers, the conscience. There
may here be a strong desire to step out of the collective
march, but the little cop keeps banging the naughty wish
back into the speechless underworld whence it came. And
even if the desire sometimes wins out, there is the potent
poison of repentance and guilt, often a far more powerful
control than the most grisly punishments inflicted from
without. Finally, there is the third line of defense when the
external means of coercion have to be brought into action.
This is reserved for that minority whose immorality has
proved stronger than both consensus and conscience. Now
religion enters vitally into each of these lines of defense. At
the first line, religion coordinates the moral consensus of
society, systematizes it in a certain picture of human des-
tiny, takes up the moral imperatives one by one, and calls
them blessed. At the second line, religion provides the most
uncomfortable pangs that conscience can inflict, involving
one fatally in guilt not only against one's neighbor (who,
after all, may be presumed to be a sinner too) but also
against supernatural forces, which not only possess far more
sinister means of retaliation than one's neighbor but may
also be so offensively righteous that one cannot even argue
with their threatened thunderbolts. At the third line, re-
ligion provides the ratification of the acts of coercion per-
formed on behalf of society. Now it is quite possible that
someone reads this interpretation, thinks of all the moral
notions that are dearest to his heart, and then nods happily
at the thought that religion protects them so effectively. In
order to avoid such reassurance it ought to be emphasized
most strongly that religion offers these services to society

RELIGION AND THE SOCIAL FICTIONS IOJ

regardless of the moral contents involved. In other words, de-
pending upon which society we are talking about, religion
will thus defend cannibalism or vegetarianism, infanticide
or love of children, slavery or universal brotherhood. The
functionality of religion appears to be a formal characteristic
of social reality and can exist as such irrespective of the
character of the moral values which it integrates.

Weber's approach to religion differs in important ways
from that of Durkheim and the functionalists. While Durk-
heim emphasizes the objective, metapersonal character of
social phenomena, Weber stresses that any social interaction
depends upon the subjective meanings given to it by the
individual actors. While the typical Durkheimian question
about a social phenomenon is "How is this related to society
as a whole?'* the typical Weberian question is 'What meaning
does this have for the people involved?" While these two
questions are not necessarily antithetical^ it is obvious that
they open the way to quite different perspectives. While
Durkheimian analysis always carries within it the tendency
toward what is called sociologisin (that is, the general as-
sumption that all human phenomena are always determined
by social processes), Weberian analysis will bring out the
way in which ideas, beliefs, and values help determine what
direction social processes will take. In terms of the analysis
of religion, Durkheimian analysis will bring out its determina-
tion by nonreligious factors, while Weberian analysis will
show how religious factors can be independent determinants
in certain social situations. The most famous analysis of this
latter kind is Weber's study on the relationship of capitalism
and Protestant ethics, which study was, among other things,
Weber's most successful work in disproving the Marxist
theory of religion.* While all of this touches upon crucial
questions of the sociology of religion, it need not concern us
in this essay. What is of much greater interest for us is that
Weber's approach also brings into focus the relationship of
religion to the social fictions, though in a way that is different
from Durkheim's.

1O8 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

We find this focus particularly in Weber's concepts of
legitimation 7 and theodicy. 8 It will be in order to look
briefly at these two concepts.

The concept of legitimation has its basis in Weber's analysis
of the political order. Any political order is an organization of
power which has at its disposal a variety of methods by
which it can coerce those who are minded to resist its com-
mands. However, no political order persists in time unless,
in addition to its power, it manages to produce some theo-
retical justification of this power. In other words, power
wants to be legitimate. This desire for legitimation has a
double source. Partly it has to do with the kind of economy
already discussed above. Nalced force is a highly uneconomical
and ultimately inefficient method of staying in power. Even
the most unscrupulous tyranny will seek to develop at least
a measure of consensus among its subjects (a fact of great
importance even in the sociology of totalitarianism). Since
men have a desire to believe in order, this attempt will be at
least partially successful, if enough time is allowed. But the
desire for legitimation probably lias roots within the minds of
the powerful themselves. It would seem that most men
want not only power but also the feeling that they have a
right to it. We can see here again that collusion in fantasy
between oppressor and oppressed that we had occasion to
look at in the last chapter. In other words, it happens not
infrequently that the propaganda of the tyrant is believed by
the tyrant himself. For instance, the Marxist ideology serves
as a legitimation of Communist power vis-a-vis the peoples of
the Communist world, But it is not inconceivable that the
ideology is also believed in by the Communist power elite
itself. It may even happen that a politician in a Western
democracy sincerely believes his own campaign oratory. There
are, after all, far more sincere liars than cynical ones, if only
because self-deception is psychologically easier than Machia-
vellianism.

It is not difficult to see how religion is related to the process
of legitimation. Even in so-called secular states, or states

KELIGION AND THE SOCIAL FICTIONS 109

that operate under a legal separation of state and church,
the most powerful legitimations of power are the religious
ones. This, of course, is most evident in acute crises of the
political order, as in times of war or insurrection. As the
drums roll before battle there is always a moment of silence
in which the impending carnage is commended to the super-
natural powers. The blessing of weapons is one of the most
time-hallowed tasks of religious functionaries. But also in the
routine exercise of power the availability of religious sanctions
is important. Power very easily involves men in ultimate
sacrifice and ultimate guilt. Therefore power requires the
ideas by which men interpret their ultimate experiences, the
ideas which motivate men to face death and which rationalize
their guilt. It is not difficult to understand the profound
proximity between throne and altar even in states that have
a republican form of government. Religion is one of the most
important ingredients in theories of legitimacy.

Weber's concept of theodicy approaches the subject from a
slightly different angle. As in other terms which Weber took
from the vocabulary of religion, he uses the concept of
theodicy in a way modified from its religious usage (where it
means the problem of reconciling the idea of an omnipotent
divinity with the existence of suffering or evil). Weber dis-
tinguishes between a theodicy of happiness and a theodicy of
suffering. The former is the religious preoccupation of the
fortunate, the latter that of their less privileged fellow men.
Both theodicies are rationalizations of the social fact that some
men live happily while others continue all their lives in
wretchedness.

Perhaps the religion of the classical Graeco-Roman world
provides one of the best examples of a theodicy of happiness.
Those who lived in happiness were those favored by the gods.
Not only was the shunning of the miserable an instinctive
act of revulsion., but it was also a religious act. The miserable,
those not favored by the gods, were religiously impure as well
as socially despicable. Their wretchedness had about it a con-
tagious quality and the happy had better stay away from it or

11O THE PRECARIOUS VISION

they might themselves become infected with it. However,
any religion which identifies divine blessing with earthly suc-
cess provides this kind of theodicy. Thus the Brahmin in
traditional Hindu society knows that his favored position is
not just an accident of birth but is well earned as a result of
good deeds in countless past reincarnations. Thus the Puritan
of, say, the society of colonial New England could be self-
righteously certain that his privileges were the bounty of an
inscrutable providence, which sees fit to elect some men and
damn others. And his latter-day secularized successor, estab-
lished in a favorable position in American society, retains the
same tendency to ascribe good fortune to virtue and its oppo-
site to vice. This theodicy of happiness is, of course, closely
related to the process of legitimation. Men want power,
wealth, happiness, but they also want a theory which explains
to them and to others that they are entitled to all these
advantages. Religion frequently satisfies this need.

The theodicy of suffering performs an analogous function
for those on the other side of the fence. While it is terrible to
suffer it is even more terrible to suffer meaninglessly. Religion
provides meaning for suffering. In this interpretation of the
religion of the underdog Weber was strongly influenced by
Marx on the one hand and by Nietzsche and Scheler on the
other. With Marx he sees that religion, in providing a theodicy
of suffering and thus relieving tensions within the social order,
tends to preserve the status quo. This, for example, is why
American slaveowners encouraged the conversion of imported
Negroes to Christianity, why one of the first buildings put up
in Southern mill villages was the church, and why the present
authorities in South Africa encourage the activities of certain
evangelists among the native population. With Nietzsche and
Scheler, Weber perceived how in certain cases religion provides
a focus for the pent-up resentments and hatreds of subjected
groups, providing a rationalization for one's own impotence.
Thus Christianity became for the slaveowner a means of social
repression, but for the slave it was a means of psychological
repression of his own instincts of rebellion. While society spits

RELIGION AND THE SOCIAL FICTIONS 111

upon the slave, religion assists in the process by suggesting
that he is despicable (thus legitimating the oppression) and
at the same time providing an outlet for the slave's aggressions
through a promise of supernatural bliss (thus fortifying the
oppression against insurrectionary dangers) . Where Weber dif-
fered from Marx and Nietzsche is in his refusal to regard these
as universal functions of religion. There are important cases
in which religion operates in society in a different way. One
might think, for example, of the role of the Quakers in the
underground railroads preceding the Civil War or the long
nights of voudun drumming preceding the Haitian revolution.
We are not concerned here with developing an exhaustive
sociological theory of religion. Il^Jii^^
bring out those functions of religion

^ppfly ' agreeing that there

are exceptions and other possibilities.

However, even with these reservations the writer is con-
vinced that the preponderant tendency of religion is to be
socially functional rather than disfunctionaL That is, religion
will tend to provide integrating symbols rather than symbols
of revolution. Religion will tend to legitimate power rather
than to put it in question. Religion will tend to find rationali-
zations for social inequalities (both among the beneficiaries
and the injured in these arrangements) rather than to seek
their removal This preponderant tendency has been well
summarized by J. M. Yinger as follows:

"Insofar as it is accepted religion, by rite and symbol, gives
emotional support to the fundamental values of a society; it
softens the hardness of the struggle for scarce values by emphasizing
values that can be achieved by all (e.g., salvation); and it lessens
the tensions of those who have failed to achieve a desired level of
a society's values by approved means by emphasizing supra-mun-
dane values/ 70

Insofar as religion functions in this way, it is crucially related
to the various fictions by which societies maintain themselves
and thus crucially related to the problems of bad faith dis-

THE PRECARIOUS VISION

cussed in the last chapter, It might be added here that, what-
ever reservations one might make about the social role of
religion in other societies, there can be no doubt that in Amer-
ica religion functions overwhelmingly as an integrator in the
sense outlined above. We shall have occasion to take illus-
trations from the American scene further on, but for the
moment we might just quote the apt characterization of
American "civic religion" made by Will Herberg;

'Civic religion is a religion which validates culture and society,,
without in any sense bringing them under judgment. It lends an
ultimate sanction to culture and society by assuring them that
they constitute an unequivocal expression of 'spiritual ideals* and
'religious values/ Religion becomes, in effect, the cult of culture
and society, in which the 'right' social order and the received
cultural values are divinized by being identified with the divine
purpose. Any issue of Christian Economics, any pronouncement of
such organizations as Spiritual Mobilization,, will provide sufficient
evidence of how Christian faith can be used to sustain the religion
of 'ktissez-faire capitalism/ Similar material from Catholic and
Jewish sources comes easily to hand, from liberal' quarters as well
as from 'conservative/ On this level at least, the new religiosity
pervading America seems to be very largely the religious validation
of the social patterns and cultural values associated with the Ameri-
can Way of Life/* 10

We can fully agree with Herberg that this description fits
contemporary American religiosity in the main and also that
this constitutes a betrayal of Biblical faith. We would only add
that there is nothing very unusual or surprising about this state
of affairs. Aaiieriranjgligion stands here in. a venerablejradi-
tion^dating alTthe "'vyjy back to the sacreiLj^fles witibtwhich

^^

In any case, we would contend that the analysis of religion as
the great social integrator is of very special importance ia
contemporary America, and not only to spoilsport sociologists.
It will now be our task to show in somewhat greater detail
how this social functionality relates to the problem of bad
faith that was discussed in the last chapter. It is this which
interests us here. It would be quite possible to approach the

RELIGION AND THE SOCIAX. FICTIONS

problem of the social fictions from other angles. For example,
there is a philosophical problem inherent in the very term of
fiction. What are fictions in the first place? How are fictions to
be distinguished from other forms of symbolizations? Are all
fictions the same as illusions? We are not competent to discuss
these questions philosophically. But we are not at the mo-
ment interested in the ontological status of social fictions. Our
interest in these fictions is a strictly anthropocentric one.
More specifically, we do not ask what these fictions ultimately
mean, but only in what way they contribute to bad faith and
human inauthenticity. It is here that the place of religion be-
comes clear.

We can look again at this point at the case of capital punish-
ment, that one event in which the bad faith and the mur-
derousness of the social fictions come together with unusual
clarity. The relationship between religion and capital punish-
ment has been perceived very clearly by the atheist critics of
religion since the eighteenth century. This relationship has
been stated so succinctly by Albert Camus in our own time
that we shall take the occasion of quoting at some length
from his essay OB the death penalty:

"The verdict of capital punishment destroys the only indisputable
human community there is, the community in the face of death,
and such a judgment can only be legitimated by a truth or a
principle that takes its place above all men, beyond the human
condition. Capital punishment, in fact, throughout history has al-
ways been a religious punishment When imposed in the name of
the king, representative of God on earth, or by priests, or in the
name of a society considered as a sacred body, it is not the human
community that is destroyed but the functioning of the guilty
man as a member of the divine community which alone can give
him his life. Such a roan is certainly deprived of his earthly life,
yet his opportunity for reparation is preserved. The real judgment
is not pronounced in this world, but in the next. Religious values,
especially the belief in an eternal life^ are thus the only ones on
which the death penalty can be based, since according to their
own logic they prevent that penalty from being final and ir-
reparable: it is justified only insofar as it is not supreme/" 11

114 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

Perhaps, to evade the criticism that, after all, Carnus was a
hostile witness, we ought to also quote from a recent article
by a respected Protestant churchman in this country in which
precisely the same point is made, only with the opposite
intention:

"We who are supposed to he Christian, make too much of physical
life. Jesus said, "And do not fear those who kill the hody but
cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul
and body in heir (Matt. 10:28) . Laxness in law tends to send both
soul and body to hell. It is more than a pious remark when a
judge says to the condemned criminal: 'And may God have
mercy on your soul.' The sentence of death on a killer is more
redemptive than the tendency to excuse his crime as no worse
than grand larceny/' 12

It is not surprising, in view of this, that churchmen have been
among the most valiant defenders of capital punishment
throughout so-called Christian history except for the period
of the early church, when any form of killing was regarded as
unthinkable for Christians, and except for the scattered wit-
ness of such groups as the Quakers. It is not even necessary to
go back to the atrocities of the Inquisition to be edified by
this affinity between priests and hangmen. In the long dis-
cussion in the British Parliament about the modification and
abolition of capital punishment, the bishops of the Church of
England stood steadfastly for the retention of the gallows. 13
In 1810 the bishops voted the death penalty for a theft of five
shillings. 14 And as recently as 1948 the Bishop of Truro
suggested that capital punishment should be extended rather
than abolished, 16 In the great debate over abolition of the
death penalty in the House of Lords in 1956, both Anglican
archbishops spoke for abolition, but only after carefully dis-
sociating themselves from the argument that capital punish-
ment was a wrong in itself and in the hope that a modification
of it will, in the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury, "re-
found the death penalty on its only secure and legitimate
foundation as an act expressing the general will of the com-

RELIGION AND THE SOCIAL FICTIONS

munity for the defence of society and for the solemn vindica-
tion of the laws of God." 16

Leaving aside for the moment the difficulties which this
traditional religious bloodthirstiness presents to adherents of
a movement founded by an executed criminal, one may ask
why this position exists and why it is so widespread among
religious people. It is here that the relationship between relfc
gion and bad faith can be seen very sharply. We have discussed
before how men put on magic cloaks for certain acts in society
for which they claim moral immunity for their persons. But
simply human conjury is not enough when it comes to some
of the most terrifying acts. Now the alibi is not just that one
does not do this personally but qua a particular kind of office-
holder. Now the office itself must be transfigured by super-
natural spookery. The act then takes on the quality of a divine
intervention. Killing is such an act. In the same essay from
which we quoted above, Camus mentions the inscription on
the executioner's sword in Freiburg, in Switzerland: "Lord
Jesus, Thou art the Judge." Thejnieaning of the inscription is
s ^ r BBlgiJfc^^ggkJIP s ^at the hangman is not doing the
neither is the fudg^nor theJury T nor

TheJdller is Jesus Christy who
is absolutely just and therefore absolutely beyond ques-
tioning. As the executioner's sword comes down on the vic-
tim's neck, we can see in the one stroke an act of religious
faith and one of bad faith inseparably linked.

It is in this fog of sanctified delusion that hangmen will
shake the hand of their victim seconds before the execution,
that priests will urge repentance on the victim to the last
moment of the atrocity, that officials presiding over all this
will afterward shake their heads and say, "I hated to do it!"
and that there will even be people who sympathize with
them! But once more we find that the delusion (though for
different reasons) is often shared by the intended victim too.
If we may paraphrase Weber here, there is a theodicy of hang-
ing and a theodicy of being hanged. A group of anthropologists
who made a study of a community in the Deep South some

Il6 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

twenty years ago have given us a bloodcurdling account of the
way in which religion entered into the hanging of two Ne-
groes. 17 The two men were sentenced to death for the
murder of fellow Negroes, This is a crime for which Southern
traditional jurisprudence rarely inflicted the death penalty, but
preceding this trial there had been a number of Negro crimes
and the general feeling in the community was that it was
about time "to teach the niggers a lesson." As soon as the
death sentence was pronounced everybody involved in the case
was genuinely anxious that the two men "get religion/' A
number of preachers were employed to achieve the desired
result. But only one of the two men obliged and died "recon-
ciled/" The other remained defiant to the end, making every-
body feel quite uneasy and resentful against him for not play-
ing the role expected of him. This is how the authors of the
study interpret this anxiety on the part of the white authori-
ties:

"To the whites the execution ceremony is much more than the
punishment of a Negro by a group of whites. It is a ritual sanctioned
by God, that is, by the most important power of the total society,
whereby the complete subordination of the individual to the society
is upheld. The proper role of the victim is one of complete subordi-
nation to the caste society and to God. He must confess his crime
and seek for forgiveness, not of individuals who have been harmed,
but of the total society. He must accept the Tightness of this
supreme white power which takes his life. If he fails in this role, if
lie does not pray and ask forgiveness, if he does not 'get religion/
he is denying the supreme authority and is rebelling against the
society. He is a 'bitter' Negro/' 18

In the case of a Negro recently executed in a Southern state
for "first-degree burglary" the prisoner, apparently half-crazed
by fear, reported that in the night before his execution he had
a vision of Jesus and that now he was ready to go. This account
was received with great satisfaction by the chaplain attending
him and duly reported by the newspapers throughout the
state. It made everyone feel much better.

Religion here functions as the ultimate alibi of the mur-

RELIGION AND THE SOIA1, FICTIONS 1 17

derer. It is the foundation stone o his bad faith. It was religion
functioning in this way which caused the original outcry of the
antireligious revolt of the eighteenth century: "Destroy the
Infamy!" But Voltaire, who wrote these words, could still say
in another place, "If God did not exist, we should have to
invent Him." It was only in the nineteenth century that this
antireligious revolt reached its logical consequence in Mikhail
Bakunin's paraphrase of Voltaire's words, "If God did exist,
we would have to abolish Him!" It is not an accident that this
same Bakunin was tormented by the existence of capital
punishment and wrote a lengthy commentary upon its reli-
gious apologists. The divinity that Bakunin wanted to abolish
is that age-old supreme being presiding over countless enact-
ments of what is rightly called the supreme penalty. There is
a section in a liturgical handbook for ministers of the Lutheran
Church of Sweden printed in the nineteenth century which
contains instructions for proper prayers and exhortations at
hangings. This handbook includes a rubric which points out
that although it may happen occasionally that an innocent
man is hanged, the minister should point out to all concerned
that no man is innocent before God and that all men deserve
death for their sinfulness, so that, presumably, the injustice
of this particular execution is of a relative nature. It may
also be assumed that such pious observations made everyone
feel much better perhaps even the prisoner about to be
hanged to the accompaniment of this liturgy!

If capital punishment provides us with the most instructive
insights into the way in which religion functions as an alibi,
it must not be supposed by any means that it is the only such
possibility. What happens in so-called Christian churches
when so-called Christian countries go to war against each other
might serve as well to make our point. It is not even neces-
sary to arrest ourselves at recent examples of American politi-
cians telling us that between the Strategic Air Command and
the Almighty we had all the weapons we could possibly want^
because, after all, the enemy right now is "godless material-
ism" so that the Almighty might be presumed to have some

1x8 ra^ PRECARIOUS VISION

bias in our favor. A more salutary lesson might be derived
from the spectacle of religious activities during World War I,
a spectacle which has been well preserved for future genera-
tions by less-than-patriotic observers on both sides for exam-
ple, Karl Kraus for the Central Powers and H. S. Mencken
for the Allies. Here both sides cried with equal piety to the
same divinity and military chaplains, field preachers and vicars-
military vied with each other in pronouncing Christian bless-
ings upon the latest instruments of mass slaughter. Since
then, at least in Europe, there has been some clerical soul-
searching on these practices. There is, as yet, little evidence
of this in America, except among those religious groups that
have a pacifist tradition. In a study made in 1952 of American
military chaplains by a sociologist it was found that "45 per
cent of the respondents believed that the killing of an enemy
soldier was a righteous act and the remainder called it a
justifiable act"; furthermore, "none felt that the individual
soldier had any moral responsibility in the matter except to
serve his country a duty which in time of war takes preced-
ence over all other/* 10 It is not surprising, after hearing this,
that the military forces continue to give commissions to
chaplains and regard their work as quite important for the
fighting morale of the troops. Here again, of course, religion is
used to provide a moral alibi for whatever acts are performed
under military orders and thus to reinforce the bad faith of
the one who commits the acts. Somewhat less dramatic
examples could be given of the same function being performed
by full-time religionists in the service of penal and coercive
institutions, or in industry, or in the employ of politicians
engaged in self-styled crusades. But perhaps this particular
point has been made now.

Religion, however, not only contributes to bad faith by
providing moral alibis. In many situations it also assists the
systematized delusions by which entire social groups succeed
in hiding from themselves the true nature of their situation.
This, again, is a facet of religion that is peculiarly signifi-
cant in contemporary American society, A brilliant analysis of

RELIGION AND THE SOCIAL FICTIONS

this process has recently been made by Arthur Vidich and
Joseph Bensman in their study of a small community in
upstate New York. 20 The study presents us, on the one hand,
with a picture of rural America rapidly disintegrating under
the impact of contemporary economic, technological, and
political forces, and on the other hand, with a picture of
the people of this fading rural society tenaciously cling-
ing to their old images of themselves. There are various
institutions in the community which reinforce these images
(which the authors call the "public ideology"). Among
them the churches are of crucial importance. They con-
tinue to proclaim the old virtues of rustic life and, implic-
itly or explicitly, affirm that these virtues are still operative in
the present. Within the religious assemblages one can, then,
act (and presumably feel) as if the dynamics of the modern
age had left untouched the small town with its simple, neigh-
borly, democratic ways. In other words, the churches play a key
role in the elaborate social-psychological process by which un-
pleasant realities are suppressed.

What Vidich and Bensman found in the small rural com-
munity can also be found in the new suburbs. 21 Here too we
find at work a powerful "public ideology/* with a strong family
resemblance to that of the rural community, differing from it
in that its function is not to preserve an old image but to
create a new one in the teeth of reality. The reality of the
suburbs is that of what sociologists call a Geselkcfafft~typ&
society that is, a society in which people have transitory,
superficial relations with each other, in which people cannot
cast down deeper roots, in which most kinds of belonging
(other than those within the immediate family) are very pre-
carious. The ideology of the suburb refers itself to what
sociologists call a Gemeinschaft-iypc society that is, a society
in which people belong to each other profoundly and with the
totality of their persons, in which life is rooted in community,
in which human relations are not fragmented or transient. It
is interesting to observe how the ideology of the suburb re-
sembles that of the small town. The image which both hold

I2O THE PRECARIOUS VISION

up is that of an earlier, more bucolic, and presumably better
America. The small town pretends that this image is true and
was always true of itself. The suburb pretends to create this
fiction ex nihilo. Now, in the suburb too the churches function
as a powerful reinforcement of this ideology .\Very often the
ideology is quite synthetic, the sophisticated product of the
sales propaganda of the real-estate and development promot-
ers. With the idyllic names of their projects (constant reitera-
tions and recombinations of such rusticity-pregnant words
like "forest/' 4 'woods/* "brook/' "meadow/ 7 and so forth)
goes the picture of the friendly rural church, a monument of
New Englandish cleanness and healthy propriety, where
neighbors meet and where harmless gossip mixes with whole-
some fun and where children can grow up to be upstanding
citizens. Sometimes, as we know, the developers actually build
the church (or churches). Religioi^ of

promoted. The reality of suburbia, of course,

can be perceived only when we follow its inhabitants as they
take off on their daily commuter trains. Then we see suburbia
not against the background of agricultural beatitude but as the
frantic escape from the murderous competition, the noise,
nerves, ulcers, and cutthroat relationships of the big city.
Religion in suburbia does not provide its clientele with the
means to confront the reality in which they spend their
crucial waking hours* Rather it provides an easy ratification of
the various escape routes that converge in the suburban way
of life. Religion is one of the allegedly recreational leisure-
time activities, but it also gives positive sanction to all the
others, The minister of the suburban church plays an impor-
tant role here. He lives like all the others, shares their aspira-
tions and tastes and most of their opinions, but in addition he
is a certified man of virtue. He thus becomes the exemplary
suburbanite, the one in whom the suburban way of life is
vicariously and solemnly justified. This is a "real good" feel-
mg when one meets him at a cocktail party,

This leads over into yet another way in which religion con-
tributes to bad faith. In the preceding paragraphs we looked

RELIGION AND THE SOCIAL FICTIONS 121

at the way in which religion reinforces certain specific delu-
sions that men have about their social reality. But religion
also reinforces in a general way, quite apart from ideological
distortions, the notion that the world ones lives in is essen-
tially and ultimately all right. For lack of a better term, we
could say that religion jatifies the "okay worid/' Again, this
is of great importance in America, though certainly not an
exclusively American or even modern phenomenon. In this
function, again, religion contributes to bad faith or perhaps
it would be more accurate here to use Heidegger's concept of
inauthenticity. For in reality man does not live in an "okay
world" at all. He rushes toward his own death on a course
marked by indecipherable signs and surrounded on all sides
by a darkness full of pain. He can become authentically
human only if, in some way, he faces and comes to terms with
this destiny. The "okay world" prevents precisely that. It thus
contributes essentially to inauthenticity. To revert to a pic-
ture used before, it is a Potemkin village erected to provide
the illusion of safety, sanity, and order.

It seems to the writer that this function of religion can
already be observed in primitive cultures, for example in
what anthropologists call "rites of passage/ 7 As the great
crises of life succeed each other in the biography of the
individual birth, puberty, marriage, sickness, death the com-
munity, through its religious ceremonialism, proclaims the
assurance that all these events are taking place within a cosmos
that is understood and somehow controlled by the social ritual
Malinowski has analyzed funerary ceremonialism in very simi-
lar terms the proclamation of the continued presence and
cohesiveness of the community against the potent threat of
death. 22 W. Lloyd Warner, in his intensive study of Me-
morial Day ritual in America, has given us a very similar
interpretation applicable to our own society. 23 But it is not
only the facing of death which provokes this reassuring re-
sponse. Any experience of potential ecstasy (ekstasis] consti-
tutes a threat to the "okay world" in which the routine busi-
ness of society is enacted. Consequently, when crises threaten

122 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

the everyday taken-for-granted routine of the individual and
there looms the ecstatic possibility of confronting directly his
own existence, society provides the rituals by which he is
gently led back into the "okay world/' Undoubtedly this
process has very deep psychological roots, perhaps all the way
back to the first time a mother bent over her terrified infant
and whispered, "If s all right, it's all right, there's nothing to
be afraid of!" For a moment then, the shadows are denied
and the nightmares chased away. When we call this process
inauthenticity we certainly are not suggesting that one ought
to live in nightmares. But we live, in fact, in a world whose
horizons on all sides are hidden in darkness, and our own
lives are rushing toward this dark horizon. We must, therefore,
face up to the night if we want to face up to our existence.
And in speaking depreciatingly of the "okay world" we also
do not wish to suggest that there is something wrong about
men's quest for order, for an intelligible cosmos or for a
meaning to their fate. Order is something that men seek,
passionately desire, try to construct precariously in their own
lives. Order is not something given, self-evident, secure. The
"okay world" gives the latter impression, which is not only
illusionary but which effectively stops the search for order be-
fore it has even started in the illusion of already sitting safely
in an oasis men abandon the search for paths through the
wilderness.

We need not concern ourselves here at any length with the
question of how far the psychology of religion might support
or weaken these sociological observations about the integrating
function of religion and thus the religious dimension of man's
flight from himself. It is, at any rate, possible that the psy-
chologist might also view religion as fulfilling deep needs for
integration in the individual just as it does in society. It should
also be obvious that the establishment of such needs is a far
cry from an argument in favor of religion (though the ob-
viousness of this does not seem to have reached some psy-
chologists with religious nostalgias). To make religion a psy-
chological function Is as little an argument for it as is the

RELIGION AND THE SOCIAL FICTIONS 123

establishment of religion as a social function. There is no
reason whatever to assume that reality is constructed for the
satisfaction of our needs. But there is no reason why we should
pursue these questions further. There is, however, one psy-
chological phenomenon that we may look at briefly in terms
of our analysis of the religious aspects of bad faith, namely
the way in which religious belief systems react to any
challenge to their validity.

Almost any religious system will carry within it a claim to
catholicity. This does not necessarily have to imply a mis-
sionary orientation or an attitude of condemnation toward
those who do not adhere to the system (these seem to be
peculiarly Western characteristics). But the religious system
presents itself as the one true picture of the world, embracing
all other perspectives within itself. What is very interesting is
what happens to the adherents of the system when this claim
is challenged. The almost instinctive reaction to such chal-
lenge seems to be an even more tenacious clinging to the
system. This reaction, of course, makes perfect sense when we
see the religious system as a means by which the individual
protects himself against ecstasy Any attack on the system
powerfully evokes the possibility that one's Potemkin village
may collapse and that one may be nakedly delivered to the
terrors that lurk behind it. This reaction is expressed in both
preventive and therapeutic procedures within the system. Un-
der the category of prevention would come all those intellec-
tual operations which in church tradition have been called
apologetics. Since the system claims to embrace all reality^ it
must interpret all reality in its own categories. Whatever ex-
ists, be it the beasts in the jungle or the demons of the
netherworld, must be looked at in terms of their possible
location within the system. If a place is found for them they
are then permitted to be, carrying neat little labels around their
necks which identify them in terms of the system. If no place
can be found for them they must be relegated to the outer
darknesses of nonbeing. This relegation, though, is an intel-
lectual task. That is, reasons must be found why "what may

124 THE **&CARIOUS VISION

not be, can not be." But if one wants to pronounce sentence
of annihilation tipon beasts and demons, one also has to liqui-
date the theories of those who proclaim their existence. That
is, the system must develop its own demonology and its own
bestiary of heretics. This grappling with rival interpretations
of the world is the apologetic enterprise. Every idea must be
made captive and brought within the confines of the system,
bound hand and foot. Catholic apologetics probably provides
the model case for this sort of intellectual activity, but it is
by no means the only one. Other religious systems may not
possess the intellectual tools by which the great Catholic
apologians have performed their taslc. But the aspiration is
there in nucleo y even among quite crude sects. If the chal-
lenging idea cannot be absorbed intellectually, it can at any
rate be ignored. A characteristic trait here is thsj^hflify tn
gas^jhg; fact ffrat someone may befai^piar wtfh *h& -sysfr*m
bujustfflr not be a belie^euJThe world is divided into the ini-
tiated and the ignorant it is unthinkable, because profoundly
threatening, that anyone could be in neither category. When
the writer some years ago was actively engaged in the study of
sectarianism he had this experience several times. The ad-
herents of a sect, upon finding out that the writer had some
knowledge of its history and tenets, immediately assumed
that he was a believer. When he identified himself as a non-
believer, it was as if the previous information about his knowl-
edge of sectarian lore had been wiped out from their memory.
They now began to tell him the simplest, most commonly
known facts about the sect in question. While this mechanism
cannot be called apologetics, it is carried by the same defen-
sive reaction. One may also add here (and refer back at this
point to the first two chapters of this essay) that the secular-
ized religions of our time engage in the same practices. Thus
Communism or psychoanalysis will have at its disposal a
formidable apologetic apparatus by which alien ideas can be
melted down and then reshaped in one's own forms.

Under the categories of both prevention and therapy would
come the inteHectoal part of those activities called the care of

RELIGION AND THE SOCIAL FICTIONS 12J

souls in Catholic pastoral theology. Here the concern is not
to bring in outside ideas but to prevent those inside from
slipping out. This involves a variety of techniques for dealing
with uncertainties and qualms on the part of believers. The
confessional, the participation in ritual, ascetic, and devotional
activities, the involvement in practical activity carried on
under the banner of the system all these are geared to
overcoming what psychoanalysts call "resistance/" Whatever
happens, the believer must be prevented from what we have
called "alternating" that is, prevented from an ecstasy or
conversion which will transport him outside the system, even
for a moment of intellectual inspection. It might be added
here that the apologetic and missionary enterprise also has a
therapeutic value in this sense. Every converted idea or every
individual convert is a confirmation that the system is right-
and that one's questions about it were unjustified. It need not
be our task here to go in further detail into the ways by which
anxiety and guilt can be manipulated to achieve this goal.

Both apologetics and the care of souls involve an organiza-
tion of doubt. The appearance of doubt in an individual be-
liever carries with it the possibility that he may step outside
the sacred circle and thus be lost to the faith. The persistence
of doubt outside the system constitutes a total threat to all
within it. In both cases the defensive reaction involves the
organization of doubt in categories that have a place within
the system. Needless to say, this is an operation o bad faith
from beginning to end. It is the chorus of the blind insisting
that all men pluck out their eyes. It is the intellectual systema-
tization of inauthenticity.

Before concluding this discussion we might point out once
more that those who maintain that religion is a vital function
of society, or even its basis, do have substantial support in the
evidence. But woe to them if they regard this insight as a
recommendation! Religion is ^egd^lj^^
j^e^^dLiaith. The paradigm of the social function of religion
is the sword of the executioner at Freiburg. While he would
not like to pursue this matter further at the moment, the

126 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

writer strongly suspects tihat a similarly disenchanting picture
will emerge if one holds that religion Is vital in terms of

psychological functions. The writer would also suspect that,
provided that this is true at all, It is true because of the same
human need for bad faith. In any case, as far as our perspective
on society is concerned, we may now have established a certain
place for religion within It. It is not one likely to give comfort
to those looking for reassurance for their religious beliefs. And
it sharpens further our problem of relating social perception
and Christian faith.

7. Religious Exercises

In this chapter we would use the imagination along the lines
suggested in Chapter 2 of this essay. Especially we would here
clarify further the relationship of religion and bad faith. Per-
haps it should be emphasized that to do so under the aspect
of comedy or satire is very far from not taking seriously the
perspectives that open themselves up to our view. On the con-
trary. In the sharp illumination of the comic we can see more
clearly what the possibilities of seriousness are. The documents
of the following pages are all, of course, purely products of
the writer's fantasy* Our first document presents us with the
sardonic view that an outside observer, here an astute Italian
prelate, might have of certain features of American Protestant-
ism. In this particular case it would not be difficult to turn his
own guns on the good monsignor and start debunking the
debunker. However,, since the writer of this essay is himself a
Protestant, he is much more interested in his own Augean
stables and quite willing to leave the other task to a Catholic
critic. Our second document illustrates what may happen
when the know-how of the mass-communications industry
is enlisted in the service of religious production. Any reader
who feels that here satirical distortion has gone too far should
cast a glance into the literature concerned with religious pro-
motion, fund-raising, and ecclesiastical management. The
postscript of this chapter hopefully speaks for itself.

128 1HE PEECARIOITS VISION

(i) MEMORANDUM TO ROME

(The following pages are part of the report of Msgr. Lodovico
Racciati to certain ecclesiastical authorities in Rome* Msgi. Racciati
spent several years in this country. His principal mission was the
comprehensive theological and sociological study of the Protestant
scene. Perhaps we should add that Msgr. Racciati, scion of an old
Roman family, is a witty, urbane, and darkly handsome gentleman
in his middle forties. He was especially popular among various
Protestant women's organizations and lectured a few times to such
groups on "Why American Men Like Italian Women/' This mildly
ri$qu address was also broadcast on the radio.)

"One of the basic problems of the religious professional in
American Protestantism comes from the simple fact that he has no
religions certainty himself but must exhibit such certainty if he is
to be effective with laymen. This problem affects a very large seg-
ment, possibly the great majority, of the ministers and religious
workers. There are, of course, some who are sincerely deluded about
their inner convictions and quite naturally adopt a posture of
complete assurance vis-4-vu the laity. We must also admit the
possibility that a few, by the mysterious favor of Providence > have
been allowed one genuine portion of that supernatural illumina-
tion which normally is found only within the True Church. For
roost of these men, however, the problem is acute and painful.
Their mission demands that they appear to the world as staunch
champions of absolute conviction. But, alas 7 when they look into
thtir hearts they find no such conviction. They have no option as
to their coarse. They must pretend to be certain. Most of them,
undoubtedly^ pretend to themselves as much as to the others. Only
a very small grotip will be practicing a conscious Machiavellian-
ism. However, this moral difference does not interest us at the
moment What is important for us to understand is the intellectual
and social posturing which results from this dilemma. We shall look
first at some of the more sophisticated intellectual techniques to
cope with the difficulty, then at some of the cruder tricks of stage
management that some may feel the necessity to faE back upon.

"The general recipe, so to speak, is to arouse and sustain in the
layman a feeling that he is groping around in the dark vale of un-
certainty while the religious professional is basking in the calm

RELIGIOUS EXERCISES

light of certitude. This accomplishment is much less difficolt than
may seem at first sight. The vast majority of laymen in the respecta-
ble Protestant churches are so vague about religion in general and
their own reasons for religious involvement in particular that an
arousing of this feeling of religious uncertainty is actually no more
than a simple pointing to the truth. Since the religious professional
knows, at the veiy least, a little more about whatever sacred lore his
sect has to offer, his role as expert and then as guide in matters of
salvation is easily established. An interesting illustration of this
is the statement often made by laymen in my hearing *l would
like to find out more about my faith/ If made to a minister such a
statement easily provides an opening to suggest some new adult
study group or other project that will add to the frantic activity he
desires among his flock. Logically, of course, the statement is self-
contradictory. Either one possesses a faith, then one will know
what it is. Or one is interested in finding out about a faith, in which
case, ipso facto, one does not possess it oneself. The resolution of
the contradiction is purely sociological the layman who asks this
question came into the church with little if any religious motives;
he now wants some religious teaching, either because he needs an
intellectual rationalization of his church membership or in some
cases because he has genuine religious frustrations- In this milieu
of total confusion the religious professional can easily assume a
stance of what the English writer Stephen Potter has called 'one-
upmanship/

"Among the broad central group of Protestants, who are un-
touched by the so-called theological revival (neo-orthodoxy), there
is the general assumption (which we Catholics might well under-
stand as a natural insight of reason) that religious certainty must
be the result of an inner experience of conviction. The religious
professional, who has had no such experience, still faces the
expectation that he ought to have had one. This forces him. into
pretending to have, indeed, had such experience. It is possible to
give this impression without lying outright. For example, it is
possible to speak at length in a sermon on the wonderful benefits
of religious experience. There will come a point when the audience
will think that the preacher is reminiscing about his own experi-
ence. In the cruder sects of the lower classes this authentication of
superior religious status is established almost exclusively by the
savoir-faire of the minister or preacher in handling the highly

1 3 o

THE PRECARIOUS VISION

emotional ritual of the worship service. If he has mastered certain
forms of diction and gesture (sometimes this can "be a performance
of savage paroxysms), his status is unlikely to be questioned on
other grounds. His colleague in more sophisticated churches will
have to employ subtler techniques. A minister of my acquaintance
has a way of blinking his eyelids very slowly and rhythmically
when he speaks of these alleged religious experiences. When he
stops blinking the impression obtained is of one coming back
from faraway realms of the spirit. A more difficult situation occurs
when a layman may ask point-blank, 'But have you yourself actu-
ally had such experiences?' Various evasive tactics are still possible
then. The minister may engage his questioner in an epistemologi-
cal argument about the meaning of 'experience' or he may subtly
give him to understand that the question touches on unutterable
domains of the forbidden. In any case, if he decides to simply
say *y es * he can have the assurance that the questioner will have a
very hard time pressing him any further. Religious experiences are
supposed to be beyond ordinary communication. Even the slight-
est attempt to put these into words will be implicitly doing the
layman a favor. He will usually appreciate the effort,

"In other words, the religious professional in this milieu will
have little difficulty maintaining his status on the hint thai; in
however modest a measure, he is having or has had privileged deal-
ings with supernatural agencies, dealings upon which he cannot
enlarge per definitionem. One aspect of this which interests me
greatly as a student of anthropology is the common acceptance of
eccentricities in the behavior of ministers, eccentricities which might
even enhance their prestige among laymen who would never
countenance them in their lawyer or physician. A minister ad-
mitted to me after several bottles of (incidentally atrocious) beer
that he had practiced a long time before acquiring a perfectly
frightening facial tic. This tic becomes particularly pronounced
when he is exercising his professional duties in the pulpit or at
ritual functions* This minister attributed his high prestige in both
parish and community at least in part to this little gambit. It is
not without scientific interest to compare this with such phenom*
ena as sacred epilepsy among savage peoples, or with other abnor-
mal manifestations which have been regarded as signs of divine or
demoniacal possession in various periods of religious history. It is
also interesting that this expectation of abnormality may extend

KELIGIOUS EXERCISES

to the minister's opinions* He may hold radical or eccentric ideas
about certain subjects, such as racial equality or pacifism, which
would lead to severe condemnation if held by laymen. This has an
important psychological function. Since not everybody can have
epileptic fits or invite Negroes to dinner, the religious professional
does these things vicariously for his laymen, who are then dis-
pensed from such difficult undertakings.

"The concept of religious experience, because of its association
with Schleiermacher and the liberal tradition, is quite gauche in
circles affected by so-called neo-orthodoxy. It is interesting to ob-
serve in what way the stance of the religious professional changes
under these circumstances. While religious experience is generally
rejected in these circles as a validation of one's religious position,
with faith taking its place, this does not seem to make impossible
a stance of superior insight into the mysteries. Logically one might
regard this as a paradoxical result. If a man takes a position not
because of knowledge but only because of faith, one might assume
that he will be more humble than another who claims mystical
conviction. But such is not the case in this group. On the con-
trary, their stance is much more assured than that of their liberal
colleagues. It is of interest to investigate this phenomenon a little
more closely*

"If faith is defined at all in this group, it is defined in terms
derived (often vulgarized) from Kierkegaard, that is as a daring
existential leap/ If then the neoorthodox minister is asked 'But
do you really know?* he may answer, 'No, I don't know I believe!
This believing can then be described in rather heroic terms as risk,
daring, adventure in a word, as a great decision. One then takes
an appropriate stance of devils-may-come braggadocio. This posi-
tion has an obvious advantage as against the claim to superior reli-
gious experience. The religious professional can freely admit that
he does not know y can entertain uncertainties and doubts, but he
still comes out in a place of superiority. The logical difficulty
inherent in this operation is commonly avoided by taking the posi-
tion that nobody can understand the perspective of faith who has
not tumself leaped* into it (which is not too different from the
position that only one who has had religious experience can under-
stand what is involved). Despite this rather cavalier manner of
avoiding the onus of one's choice, it may happen that an uncon-
vinced questioner, having had it explained to him that faith is a

322 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

decision, may continue to ask, *Yes ? but why did you make tliis
decision?' There is a common line of defense here that we ought
to look at.

"The way this line works Is to make it appear that faith (of
course in the interpretation of it offered by the religious profes-
sional) is the only alternative to despair. To support this position
frequent if amateurish use will be made of terminology derived
from psychoanalysis and existentialism. Both these ideologies are
supposed to offer a gloomy, unappetizing picture of human nature,
an antithesis to the optimistic notions still widely current in Amer-
ican society (this antithesis adds snob appeal to the argumentation
one's sophisticated pessimism is contrasted with the crude eupho-
ria of the masses). The sum of these ideas is that human life is
described as a cesspool of corruption, anxiety, and guilt, a dismal
rat hole except for that one opening into the sunshine which is
the decision to have faith. While this line can have a measure of
success among more educated groups, among the naturally jovial
people who constitute the majority of the population, it may often
meet with determined resistance. To overcome such resistance
the practitioners of this line may resort to psychological techniques
not too far removed from those of their more primitive colleagues
in the gospel-tent school of evangelism. There is always something
that people will feel guilty or anxious about. With some probing
this weak spot can be found. Even when such probing is not pos-
sible., many people will eventually succumb when confronted with
the firm implication that there Is something vile about their inner-
most being, especially when simultaneously they are shown a
guaranteed method of getting rid of this vileness.

"Oee technique of Inducing In the layman a sense of Inferiority
and obligation is what may be called the method of historical
gratitude. It Is used by liberals and neo-orthodox with equal
frequency^ especially when other lines of a more religious nature
fail. The method Involves the demonstration that religion is
necessarily involved in all the highest values that the layman holds
and that, therefore, he ought to be involved religiously In the way
that the religious professional wants him to. The method will pick
out some moral values adhered to by the layman, say respect for per-
sons, or belief in human equality, or even democracy, and then to
assert that these values rest on a religious basis. Religion can then

RELIGIOUS EXERCISES

be presented as the fundamental and necessary basis of the Ameri-
can way of life and of the whole of Western civilization. The supe-
riority of the religious professional is established on a pseudointel-
lectual basis, in that he has this profound insight into the meaning
of history which the layman lacks. If this method is used with some
cunning, the layman can be made to feel like a perfect ingrate
vis-a-vis every preacher from Habakkuk to Reinhold Niebuhr.

"Another technique for achieving the same goal is to make the
layman feel an outsider socially rather than religiously or intel-
lectually. This technique is based on the sociological fact that
religion is still closely associated with respectability in America.
It can then be maintained that those who are inside, the sane,
sensible people who take a sound, balanced view of life, have a
positive relationship with religion (of which, again, the religious
professional makes himself appear as the authorized spokesman).
This can easily induce in the layman that feeling of inferiority
that comes from being classed among irresponsible juveniles. Even
worse, it might be implied that an irreligious position (in the sense
of not accepting the guidance of the religious professional) is tin-
American and puts the layman in the company of Communists,
bohemians, and other unspeakable renegades. It may be seen that
this technique works best with young people just beginning their
married life or, even better, first experiencing the responsibilities
of parenthood.

"I have briefly sketched some of the principal intellectual pos-
tures that religious professionals in this milieu will use to establish
their own superiority before the laity. To this I would now add
some of the cruder tricks by which this end is sought. There are
considerable differences in this among different denominations. I
cannot give an exhaustive account of all the techniques used and
a few will have to serve as examples.

"One technique, mainly used by Episcopalians, is to overawe the
layman with a cultural tradition, which is then identified with the
religious position being promoted. To a Catholic observer, es-
pecially one from Europe, this spectacle can offer considerable
entertainment. Catholic missionaries in Protestant (especially
Anglo-Saxon) countries have, of course, commented on the at-
traction Catholicism has for people who identify it with the
splendors of a civilization much older than theirs. Coupled with

1*2 A THE PRECARIOUS VISION

the Puritan instinct to feel guilty about what one is oneself this
attraction can give rise to the illusion that in walking into an
Irish chapel in the slums of Indianapolis one is in fact stepping
into the antechamber of the Sistine Chapel. I need not concern
myself at the moment with the moral issues this complex may
raise for Catholic missiology. I only wish to point out that a
similar complex is involved in a certain Episcopal line.

"For well-known historical reasons anything English has always
had high prestige among Americans. The Episcopalians are the
principal group that can capitalize on this advantage (feeble at-
tempts in the same direction are sometimes made by Congregation-
alists in New England). What is more, the Episcopal Church
has enjoyed a particularly close affinity with the American upper
classes. This denomination thus has the advantage of being able
to cater not only to the widespread Anglophilia of Americans
but also to the urgent desire of social climbers to identify with
the elite. This double advantage is utilized well by Episcopal
churches throughout the land. The layman who enters one of
these quasi-Tudor sanctuaries finds himself confronted by a quasi-
Oxonian minister, who, by deep instinct and common consent, is
undoubtedly 'one-up* on him when it comes to culture.

"The personal effort that goes into this establishment of the
British raj over the empire of American piety was powerfully
brought home to me when a minister of my acquaintance, who
had been a Congregationalism joined the Episcopal Church and
was in due course ordained in it. The most remarkable change
occurred in the man's speech. Coming from the borough of
Brooklyn, he had all his life carried the unmistakable mark of his
origins on his language. After his ordination as an Episcopal
minister his speech changed rapidly and he now sounds like an
only slightly Americanized imitation of Rex Harrison. But his
physical appearance has changed greatly too. While he was a
Congregationalist he used to wear gaily striped ties, sensible busi-
ness suits, and well-shined shoes. He now wears dark English
tweed and long thin ties, and never shines his shoes. One touch,
which I find particularly intriguing, is his habit of wearing a
wrinkled seersucker suit over his clerical collar in the summer.
This dramatically sets him off both against the colorless Prot-
estants in their tropicals and the Romans sweating uncomfortably

EELIGIOUS EXERCISES 135

in their black garments a subtle but impressive proclamation of
an Anglican way of life! I might add that my friend, who used to
be a very bashful person in any matters touching upon the erotic^
now bravely sprinkles his conversation with restrained double-
entendres, has switched from cigarettes to massive, foul-smelling
pipes, and has discontinued his subscription to The New Yorker
in favor of Punch. It is easily seen how such established pre-
eminence in cultural matters can be put to good use in fortifying
a religious position.

"Another technique of cultural terrorism, which also comes
mainly from this denomination, has a somewhat better chance of
being successfully adopted by non-Episcopalians. As a result of
the so-called Anglo-Catholic movement, a considerable number
of Episcopalian ministers have acquired some knowledge of Eastern
Orthodoxy. This sometimes rather tenuous expertise can be used
to captivate some laymen whose tastes ran to more exotic spiritual
fare than can be provided by the English line, I myself attended
an incredible exhibition of this technique in an Episcopal church
in Missouri (I should confess honestly that it was only part
of the exhibition I attended), where the minister certified himself
as an accomplished mystagogue in the eyes of his parish by staging
an eight-hour Ethiopian mass. The choir, which had practiced
for the event for months, entered into the act in shifts and people
came from miles away to see the show. This, of course, is an ex-
treme example of this approach. But even little liturgical gimmicks
or obscure patristic references can have some effect in this era of
ecumenicity and world-wide tourism. Naturally the method can
backfire too. I read in the newspapers about an overenthusiastic
Baptist minister in New Jersey whose experimentalism in what
he called the "creative structuring of worship'* cost him his job.
He had the young people of his parish perform a Tibetan ritual
dance at a meeting of the ladies* aid society,, with himself offering
a running commentary. The ladies not only failed to appreciate
the spiritual message of the ceremony, but regarded the whole
thing as an open invitation to concupiscence. The young minister
in question now operates as a Jungian psychotherapist in New York
City.

"American Lutherans have sometimes tried to use the Continent
about the way Episcopalians use England. This will Involve such

THE PEECARIOUS VISION

tricks as referring to incomprehensible European theologians, using
multisyllabic terms in German or even Swedish, and generally
exhaling a sort of healthy no-nonsense beer-hall religiosity which
says, 'Who are you to disagree with the University of Erfangen? 7
Unfortunately the suspicion against things Germanic produced in
America by two world wars makes this approach rather difficult
except among people of central-European ethnic origins. Luther-
ans, incidentally, are fond of adopting an unusually belligerent
stance in matters of faith, no doubt trying to emulate the
picture they have in their minds of their founder defiantly facing
the Diet of Worms. If accompanied by a penetrating stare and a
painfully crashing handshake, a feeling of squirming inadequacy
can be produced in more timid types of people, Methodists often
use the precise opposite of this stance. They exhibit an air of mild,
meek nonaggressiveness T with an almost shy look and a generally
submissive tone of voice. It is they who may actually appear to
wince in even the gentlest handshake. This trick works best
against naturally robust individuals, who may be quickly reduced
to a state of apologetic bewilderment.

"Each denomination will have to face tip to these problems
within the limitations of its heritage. The basic difficulty, as I
have suggested before, is the same for all of them the need to
impress the layman with rather scarce equipment for doing so. It
goes without saying that this need is rooted in the religious and
professional self-conception of the men in question. However,
we should not fail to also take into consideration the economic
factor in the situation* The Protestant minister finds himself in a
situation of acute sectarian competition and strong pressures from
all sides Melding him to 'succeed/ His livelihood., in the case of
most Protestant denominations^ depends almost entirely upon
the good will of the laity in his congregation. A change of oc-
cupation is no longer as easy in America as it was some decades
ago, especially for a man getting on in years. What with the un-
usual fertility exhibited by ministerial marriages in the Protestant
world, it should not surprise us that the economics of the matter
sometimes make for quite desperate measures to remain on top
in this contest between professional virtuosity and the shifting
popular tastes in religious consumptioa."

KELIGIOUS EXERCISES 137

() MEMORANDUM FROM MADISON AVENUE

(The following is taken from a brochure sent out by Ballon,
Weatherbee, Inc., a public-relations firm in New York City, ad-
vertising its new market-research process of RELIGIOSCOPE. The
brochure was sent to top officers in various denominational
headquarters and interdenominational organizations.)

"Ballou, Weatherbee has always believed in TOTAL public re-
lations. A firm that employs Ballou, Weatherbee can rest assured
that the TOTAL process of bringing its image before the public
eye will be professionally handled by our communication specialists
from beginning to end. Ballot^ Weatherbee not only serves its
client through expert representation with the mass media* but also
has its own research department providing the client with scientific
insight into the situation he faces. Ballou y Weatherbee is proud
of its research department, which contains among other specialists
no less than eleven Ph.D/s in the social sciences and psychology,
and which is known throughout the country as a pioneer in the latest
psychodynamic methods of market research. The TOTAL approach
in public relations, which has made Ballou, Weatherbee famous,
is now well established in the secular market (among our clients
are to be found Amalgamated Energy Corporation, Chipper-EEE
Breakfast Foods, International Deodorants of Brussels, The Per-
manent Office of the Mau-Mau Movement at the United Nations,
and many others). It is with a feeling of great satisfaction that
we now recommend our approach to top religious executives for
revolutionary use in the spiritual market.

"Forward-looking religious executives, responsibly conscious of
the multimillion investment entrusted to their care, have for years
used the techniques of market research in planning their nation-
wide operations. Few boards of church extension or evangelism
would today hazard the establishment of a branch in a new area
without first having the results of an impartial survey at their dis-
posal. Such surveys, of course, have become standard procedure
not only in the planning of denominational agencies but in the
negotiation of comity agreements on an interdenominational
level. In recent years, especially as a result of rising construction
costs and the rapidly shifting demographic picture* the most astute
religious executives have begun to apply much more sophisticated

THE PRECARIOUS VISION

concepts of the survey process. They realize that when planning to
build a new, say, Methodist church in an expanding suburban
development, much more needs to be known than the number of
Methodists within reach of the projected church. Thus the services
of city planners, real-estate consultants, and population experts
have been increasingly drawn into the strategic considerations of
religious management. Before a new church is built it is thus
possible to know the relationship of its area to the planned or
predicted development of the entire region around it, the move-
ments of population, and real-estate values, and so to arrive at an
intelligent estimate on the advisability of this investment from a
business point of view. While all this is but another example of
the tip-to-date flexibility and foresight of American religious
executives, and certainly a development to be wholeheartedly
welcomed, it still involves a concept of market research that must
be called old-fashioned by the standards of the secular market.
To be precise, it involves the concept that prevailed before the
rise of psychodynamic methods of research.

"Certainly it is superfluous to point out that religion touches
upon very profound levels of personality. It is only logical, then, to
point out that it follows that religious market research must some-
how touch upon these deeper psychological levels if it is to be
relevant to the planning decisions. It has been found that even
in the selection of breakfast cereals deep psychological forces
are at work motivating the choice of one product as against another.
Ballon, Weatherbee has probably undertaken the most comprehen-
sive study in this area and our statements on this subject have the
authority of scientific fact- If this is true of such apparently super-
ficial decisions as those involving the purchase of breakfast cereals,
how much more is it true of the decisions that involve the religious
behavior of people! It is high time that this understanding be
applied to religious research. Writers on religion of many theological
persuasions have said over and over again that man has profound
religious needs. And professional religionists have asserted over and
over again that the purpose of their calling is the satisfaction of
these religious needs. We take the liberty of adding that research
can help determine what exactly these religious needs are. In this
way it will greatly assist the mission of satisfying these needs. Our
motto *THHOUGH DEPTH-RESEARCH TO DEPTH-IMPACT/ already
amply validated in the secular domain, receives its most profound

RELIGIOUS EXERCISES 139

challenge in the service of organized religion. With all modesty
Ballon, Weatherbee would like to offer its approach as a contribu-
tion of the mass-communications industry to the religious revival in
America and thus to the spiritual strength of our country.

"RELIGIQSCOPE, a research process developed and used exclusively
by Ballou, Weatherbee, provides the religious executive with scien-
tifically tested information on the religious needs, both conscious
and subconscious, of his target audience. RELIGIOSCOPE is to be used
in conjunction with a conventional community survey, a service
which is included in the RELIGIOSCGPE operation. Also included is
the service of an evaluation team, which not only provides a
comprehensive interpretation of the findings but gives detailed
recommendations concerning the practical application of these
findings to the planning involved. In employing this service the
religious executive will thus never face the perplexing problem of
relating complex research findings to a proposed course of action.
The evaluation team does this chore for him. Once the research
operation is concluded, and provided that an attack on this market
is indicated by the findings, a different branch of the Ballou,
Weatherbee organization jumps into action and assists the religious
executive in utilizing all appropriate means of mass communica-
tions in achieving his program in that area. Our job is only over
when your entire program has been successfully completed.

"REUGIOSCOFE uses the latest methods of psychodynamic re-
search to uncover the latent religious needs of people. With the use
of a rigidly controlled statistical procedure to insure representative-
ness, respondents are selected from the population that
is to constitute the target audience of the projected religious
operation. Respondents are paid a per diem amount for agreeing to
participate in the tests (the amount being regulated in accordance
with the socioeconomic status of the respondents) . A full day of
testing is normally required to take one group of respondents
through the full RELIGIQSCOPE battery. The RELIGIOSCOPE battery
begins with the respondents filling out a set of questionnaires
constituting the 'multivector religio-ideational inventory* (MRII),
which provides a comprehensive picture of the respondents" con-
scious- history and belief formulations in the religious area, as well
as general infoimation on personal background. The next step
in the battery involves administration of the *Schle!m-Dickinson
religious apperception test* (RAT) 7 a projective test which begins

THE PRECARIOUS VISION

to provide insight into the respondents' subconscious religious
needs. The third step in the REOGIOSCOPE battery is the 'religio-
kinetic composition test* (RKCT), in which groups of respondents
enact religious rituals of their own invention, thus giving further
insight into both conscious and subconscious needs. The fourth
step in the battery is the "narcosynthetic religious anticipation
trauma' (NSRAT), a technique developed by Dr. Waldemar
Schleim of our staff and perhaps the most exciting innovation
incorporated in RJEXIGIOSCOPE. In this test, which each respondent
takes individually, a quasi-schizophrenic state is induced by the
injection of a narcotic drag (of the variety popularly called 'truth
serums' which, of course, have no physical or psychological after-
effects, and can be used even on children without danger). In
this state it is suggested to the respondent that he is in contact
with supernatural beings, in the presence of the divinity, in heaven
or hell, having visions, listening to oracular voices, and so forth.
This test brings to the surface the deepest religious images found
in the subconscious and is so far the most refined scientific
instrument for the diagnosis of the total religious Gestalt of a
subject. With this test the battery is completed.

"While the RELIGIOSCOFE battery is designed for adults a modi-
fication of it is now being developed for use on children. This is
especially important for religious executives interested in the
young-family, suburban market^ where activities in religious educa-
tion are essential to the success of any religious operation. Slight
modifications of various steps in the battery are provided for
different socioecooomic and ethnic variables.

"RjExiGxoscopE is still in its pioneering stages, but already its
efficacy has been tested in a number of situations. A top-secret
government agency concerned with intelligence operations behind
the Iron Curtain has used RELIGIOSCOPE in its *anti-brain-wa$hing'
training, as we are now free to disclose. One of our national Prot-
estant denominations is using RELIGIOSCOPE on an experimental
basis in four pilot projects in different regions of the country,
REOGIOSCOFE was rst used with resounding success when Swami
Gupta moved his operation from California to Connecticut, in
order to be closer to the cultural centers of the nation. A complete
REOGIOSCOPE research was carried through in three counties in
the southern part of Connecticut. As a result, invaluable advice
could be given to the Swami, who has since established himself
successfully in his new location. For example, while in California

RELIGIOUS EXERCISES

the Swami had satisfied very adequately the ritual needs of his
clientele, REUGIOSCOPE now made it possible for him also to
satisfy the needs for personal counseling and guidance. The *guid-
ance cells/ staffed by specially trained psychotherapists and located
in an annex of the Swamfs sanctuary in Westport, were one of
the direct results of this research. RELIGIOSCOPE findings were also
partly instrumental in the Swamfs design of the new Ceremony of
the Lotus Maidens,, one of the Swamfs most beautiful religious
creations.

"REUGIOSCOPE is being offered on a completely nonsectarian
basis to all religious groups. Ballou, Weatherbee firmly believes in
the American principles of religious equality and interfaith co-
operation. At the same time, we acknowledge the individual genius
of each religious tradition. While our scientific techniques can be
used to advantage by any religious executive, we realize that
different groups will have different problems of policy. For this
reason our evaluation teams work closely together with a number
of theological consultants, all professors selected from prominent
theological seminaries. These consultants are called in to form an
advisory panel for each individual project. In addition, a number
of professional religionists are permanently employed on our
staff.

"The profession of public relations considers itself to carry out
an elevated calling in the marketplace where ideas and creativity
meet. Along with other specialties in mass communications, such
as advertising and market research, public relations builds bridges
of understanding. It brings together producer and consumer,
idealist and public, artist and audience. Through what Edward
L. Bernays has called *the engineering of consent/ the profession
helps safeguard the flow and interchange of communication essen-
tial to our democratic way of life. Ballou, Weatherbee is proud
to pioneer in the application of its professional techniques to the
great cause of American religion. May this pioneering mission
contribute to the mobilization of America's religious forces as
our country faces the world-wide threat of godless materialism!"

ADDENDUM: The following is from a newswire dispatch from
Miami Beach, dated some months after the appearance of the
above brochure:

"Along with Joe ('Armpits 7 ) Allonzo and three other top bosses

142 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

of the international narcotices syndicate operating out of Miami
Beach, the F.BJ. arrested Dr. Waldemar Schleiin, a research
psychologist In the employment of a prominent New York public-
relations firm. The FJB.L alleges that Dr. Schleim was retained
by the Allonzo organization to undertake market-research studies
preparatory to the establishment of new branches for the sale of
narcotic drugs. Dr. Schleim, on the basis of depth-psychological
research, is alleged to have advised the organization as to which
psychological types are most susceptible to the narcotic habit and
as to what approaches are best to be used by 'pushers' in the illegal
traffic. The New York firm employing Dr. Schleim has firmly
denied any knowledge of his activities in Miami Beach,, where he
went to supervise a survey undertaken on behalf of a Protestant
denominational agency, and announced that it has immediately
discontinued its employment of the arrested psychologist. Follow-
ing the arrest of Dr. Schleim (known as Wacky Waldo' in the
local underworld), the F.B.L confiscated a large quantity of
clinical and laboratory equipment found in his hotel suite for use
as evidence in the case."

(Hi) POSTSCRIPT FROM GREENLAND

USAF Base, Ice Cap % 67,

Greenland
25 April 1977

SUBJECT; Day of Judgment

TO: AH Officers and Enlisted Men of this Command

i. Information received thru channels by this Command in-
dicates that the cosmic phenomena now being observed in various
areas of the world may be preparatory to the Day of Judgment
(J-Day) often referred to by religious personnel Liaison with the
USAF Space Intelligence Command and the Baptist Prediction
Bureau indicates the probability that J-Day may take place at any
time after 0001 hours, i May 1977, with its probable center located
in the Mediterranean area. However, chain effects may be felt in the
area of this Command. The following SOP is issued for the guid-
ance of all personnel, with the goal of undisturbed continuity
throughout this emergency of the normal activities of this Com-
mand.

RELIGIOUS EXERCISES 143

2. All personnel of this Command, including civilian employees,
will participate regularly in a post-wide Metaphysical Preparedness
Program (MPP). Each unit commander will designate one (i)
MPP officer, to be assisted by two (2) MPP noncommissioned
officers, the choice of suitable personnel to be in the hands of the
unit commander. Unit MPP personnel, in close coordination with
the chaplains, will be responsible for MPP lectures, displays, and
training. The MPP officer in each unit will be directly responsible
to the post chaplain's office, which may supersede all other
channels of command on questions concerning MPP.

3. AH personnel on this post will attend one (i) MPP training
period a day. This is to take precedence over all other duties.
Appropriate guidance, including training manuals, will be issued
to MPP personnel thru channels. Pending arrival of MPP mate-
rials, unit MPP personnel will use training aids for Chemical
Bacteriological and Radiological Warfare (CBR), as J-Day is
expected to have side effects falling generally into CBR category.

4. Unit commanders will facilitate individual MPP training for
all personnel. MPP posts will be set up at conveniently located
spots in unit areas for individual ministrations by chaplains and
their assistants.

5. The igloo of "Eskimo Elsa" and all other establishments as-
sociated with it are placed off limits to all U.S. personnel until
further notice.

6. Authority: TX

FOR THE COMMANDING

Solomon B. Goldfarb
Maj USAF

Assistant Adjutant
OFFICIAL: Harold J. Munseworth
Capt USAF

Adjutant, MPP Section

DISTRIBUTION: R-5~8

THE PRECARIOUS VISION

USAF Base, Ice Cap $? 67,

Greenland

29 April 1977

SUBJECT; Day of Judgment (J-Day)

TO; All Officers and Enlisted Men of this Command

1. The disintegration of the moon at 0300 hours, 28 April 1977,
and the sighting of the Whore of Babylon on a purple cloud at
0550 hours this morning at Cressy Point indicates beginning of
J-Day operations. Following SOP will go into effect immediately.

2. Classified information received by this Command indicates
that J-Day personnel, probably Angelic, may arrive at various places
without prior notice and institute summary legal proceedings in
connection with J-Day. If recognized, J-Day personnel will be
accorded every military courtesy normally extended to official
visitors from an Allied Power, They are to have full access to all
files and every cooperation from unit commanders. Theological
argument is to be avoided except by qualified MPP personnel.

3. Classified information just released by the Israeli Air Attach^
in Washington, D.C., indicates that J-Day personnel may use the
Hebrew language* The Jewish chaplain's office announces the
establishment of a rapid beginners' course in that language which
is open to all interested personnel. Chaplain Shapiro will also assist
unit commanders in any language problems that may arise.

4. If resurrection of the dead should occur within boundaries of
the post, resurrected military personnel, until further notice, will
retain rank and unit as of date of demise.

5. The legal sections of all units, in cooperation with Chaplain
Shapiro^ will assist personnel in preparing Certificates of Non-
culpability (TX 5778-90^88, 28 April 1977). These Certificates
are to be prepared in quintuplicate and distributed as directed.

6. U.S. personnel^ military or civilian, will not (repeat not]
participate in Eskimo exorcism rites,

7. The sale of intoxicating beverages at the central officers mess
or any of its branches is herewith discontinued until further
notice.

RELIGIOUS EXERCISES 145

8. Amendments to this SOP will be issued as required.

9. Authority: TX 675&-98X-65555.

FOR THE COMMANDING GENERAL:

Solomon B. Goldfarb
Maj USAF

(Member of B'nai-B'rith)
OFFICIAL: Harold J. Munseworth
Capt USAF

(Member, Baptist Church)

DISTRIBUTION: R-5-8

Message over public-address system, midnight,, 30 April 1977:
THIS is THE COMMANDING GENERAL SPEAKING. I HEREWITH

ORDER A RED ALARM REPEAT RED ALARM. AUL PERSONNEL IM-
MEDIATELY TAKE BATTLE STATIONS FOR A RED ALARM REPEAT
RED ALARM. THIS IS THE COMMANDING GENERAL SPEAKING. , , .

Message over public-address system, 0001 hours, i May 1977:

LORD HAVE MERCY UPON USl

Silence.

8. Antirellgious Critique

THE A^mEJEUGlOIJS CRITIQUE SERVES TO UNMASK THE INAUTHEN-
TICITY OF THE StEUGIOOS RATIQNAUZATION. ATHEISM OR AGNOS-
TICISM 3wIAY BE STEPS INTO FREEDOM.

IB the presentation of religion in the last two chapters there is
implied a moral critique. It will be advisable, however, to make
this critique explicit before we undertake to deal with the sub-
ject from the viewpoint of the Christian faith. In explicating
this critique we shall also make clearer the remarks made on
religion in the first chapter. It is not of interest here to give a
historical survey of antireligious thought and of the ways in
which our own critique relates to it. It may be enough to refer
to a substantial tradition of thinking along these lines, be-
ginning in earnest in the eighteenth century in France and
reaching its most incisive expressions in the nineteenth cen-
tury in various European countries. 1 There are different per-
spectives from which this critique can be undertaken. One
may mention only a few names to indicate this Feuerbach,
Marx, Bakunin, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche. Yet nowhere is this
critique expressed more trenchantly or more profoundly than
in the work (and especially the last work) of one whose entire
life was spent in the passionate tension between faith and
unbelief. We are, of course, speaking of Dostoyevsky and of his
last novel, The Brothers "Kararnazov. There are various types of
antireligious positions found in Dostoyevsky's work, 2 The one
which is most important for our purposes is the position
expressed so shatteringly in the figure of Ivan Karamazov. For
here atheism is the outcome not of a rationalistic metaphysics
but of a moral attitude.

ANTIRELIGIOUS CRITIQUE 147

The morality of this type of atheism consists in the rejec-
tion of God, not because He is improbable but because He is
unjust. At the center here stands not a philosophical line of
reasoning but a passionate protest. The central problem is
not one of epistemology but that of theodicy. The great earth-
quake of Lisbon was used by some of the eighteenth-century
thinkers as an occasion for asking how the omnipotent and
perfect God worshiped by Christians can stand by and allow
such horrors to come to pass. As Voltaire put it in his poem
on this catastrophe:

"Shocked at such dire chimeras, I reject
Monsters which fear could into gods erecL
But how conceive a God, the source of love,
Who on man lavished blessings from above,
Then would the race with various plagues confound,
Can mortals penetrate His views profound?
Ill could not from a perfect being spring,
Nor from, another, since God's sovereign king;
And yet, sad truth! in this our world 'tis found,
What contradictions here my soul confound!" 3

Yet Voltaire, even in this very poem, arrived at a fundamen-
tally optimistic belief in providence, which he shared with
other exponents of the deism of this period. It was the Marquis
de Sade who may well have been the first thinker of this same
period who used the contradiction of theodicy to arrive at an
uncompromising atheism. In his own words "The idea of
God is the sole wrong for which I cannot forgive mankind/* 4
Albert Camus has described this moral atheism very clearly in
his discussion of Ivan Karamazov from which a fuller quota-
tion may be helpful:

" *If the suffering of children/ says Ivan, 'serves to complete the
sum of suffering necessary for the acquisition of truth,, I affirm
from now onward that truth is not worth such a price/ Ivan
rejects the basic interdependence, introduced by Christianity, be-
tween suffering and truth, Ivan's most profound utterance, the
one which opens the deepest chasms beneath the rebel's feet, is
his even if: *1 would persist in my indignation even if I were

THE PRECARIOUS VISION

wrong/ Which means that even if God existed, even if the mystery
cloaked a truth, even if the starets Zosime were right, Ivan
would not admit that truth should be paid for by evil, suffering,
and the death of innocents. Ivan incarnates the refusal of
salvation. Faith leads to immortal life. But faith presumes the
acceptance of the mystery and of evil, and resignation to injustice.
The man who is prevented by the suffering of children from ac-
cepting faith will certainly not accept eternal life. Under these
conditions, even if eternal life existed, Ivan would refuse it He
rejects this bargain. He would accept grace only unconditionally,
and that is why he makes his own conditions. Rebellion wants
all or nothing. 'All the knowledge in the world is not worth a
child's tears/ Ivan does not say that there is no truth. He says that
if truth does exist, it can only be unacceptable. Why? Because it is
unjust/ 75

Camus has given us in his own work unforgettable expressions
of this same moral rejection of religion for example in The
Plague, where the doctor Rieux announces that he refuses to
worship a God who tortures little children, or in that haunt-
ing passage in The Fall in which the melancholy of Jesus is
explained by his responsibility for the massacre of the inno-
cents. The problem of theodicy is here approached from the
moral position which declares the bystander to be guilty
and which indicts God as the eternal bystander. Religious
submission is thus seen as an assent to injustice and the rejec-
tion of this submission becomes the first step of human
liberation. 6

The problem of theodicy in its metaphysical sense is not
our concern here. However, as we have seen before, this prob-
lem has its social dimension as well. If theodicy in its meta-
physical sense may be the submission to an inscrutable
providence, there is also the social theodicy in which men
submit to evil and suffering as it is inflicted by society. The
two theodicies are not unrelated* It is in the name of the
metaphysical fudge that the empirical executioner brings
down his sword. If suffering and injustice are accepted on a
cosmic scale,, this acceptance will have its obvious social and
political consequences. There may well be a sort of metaphys-

ANTrRJELICIOUS CRITIQUE 149

leal masochism involved In both of these theodicies, but this
masochism very likely has more to do with the wish foi
meaning than that for pleasure. The thought of living in a
meaningless universe is unbeara^^

in a.3ociety witKouf reason or purpose. It is better to be sub-
jected to tyranny than to^cBJosTfTEus even the most ferocious
divinity is preferable to the void of an indifferent cosmos in
which not even the sentence of damnation answers our cry for
order. The gods may be unjust, they may create purgatories
and hells, they may torture and kill but all of these things
are better than to conceive of their absence. One then submits
to the punishing divinity as the inasochist submits to his
torturer. By submitting to pain ? instead of rebelling against it,
one affirms an order beyond oneself and the faith that this
order will have a place within it for one's own being. It is very
much in the same way that men submit to earthly tyrannies*
It is not only fear that makes them do this. It is the often
frantic desire for order, for Iegitimacy 7 which may lead to the
most fanciful rationalizations designed to prove that the pow-
ers that be are ultimately just and purposefulfWe often find
before the onset of great revolutions that these rationalizations
collapse and that rebellion reaches up to the centers of power
which had previously been immune. Thus it would seem that
many Russians, even those most violently opposed to the
social ills of the old regime, went right on believing that there
were only evil intermediaries standing between the people and
the good intentions of the tsar. This rationalization collapsed
with the abortive revolution of 1905, There could no longer
be any doubt about the fact that the tsar himself was guilty.
But the myth of the good tsar is not unrelated to the other
myth that makes the tsar the vicar of divine power. The re-
ligious theodicy sustains the political one. It is an instinctive
grasp of this connection that explains the antireligious animus
of most of the great movements of revolt following the revolu-
tion of 1789. It is the same sound instinct which makes
conservatives of all descriptions appeal to the authority of
religion.

150 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

What is at the bottom of this masochism (be it religious
or political) is the inability to face honestly the immense
precariousness of our existence. We would then follow Sartre's
rather than Freud's interpretation of masochism here that is,
masochism as a mode of bad faith. In politics this means the
desperate optimism that we find so often today when people
discuss the possibilities of an atomic war, always based on an
assumption of rationality or even morality on the part of the
policy-makers on either side, an assumption which may be
plausible but certainly remains precarious. We desire to have
a government that governs, that is informed, that knows what
its next step is going to be. Even a bad government is better
than none. Thus we seek for hidden meaning in even the most
patently meaningless actions of our political leaders. Some-
times this urge to attribute sense where there is none may
lead to the ironic consequence that the most sophisticated
intentions are suspected behind the most hopeless blunders
the reasoning being, of course, that since such blunders are
inconceivable, they must hide truly remarkable designs. This
psychological complex has its religious parallel and probably
a religious root. At any rate for most men the universe offers
no certain answer to their cry for meaning. This silence is
unbearable. Rather than suffer it men fill the void with the
creations of their desperate imagination. There can be little
doubt that, whatever religious phenomena may not fall into
this scheme of interpretation (and there certainly are some),
there are wide areas of religious psychology where such a
theory of projection adequately explains whatever is taking
place. Since men know deeply how precarious is the being of
these gods fashioned out of the clay of their own desperation,
this being must be affirmed violently, absolutely, intolerantly.
We have already looked at some of the psychological fortress-
building that this complex evokes. Here also the precarious-
ness of existence is driven out of consciousness by the resolute
banging of the holy tam-tams. Men crouch before their idols
in the narrow spaces of their various caves. As they huddle

ANTIRELIGIOTJS CHITIQTJE

together in this way, they can temporarily forget the great
silence of the stars outside the caves. This too is bad faith.

There are, of course, atheistic movements which simply
substitute a pseudoreligion of their own for the religion they
seek to destroy. The best example of this is the Communist
movement in its self-styled "godlessness" with its scriptures,
its altars and rites, its exegetes and heresiarchs, its catechism
and its eschatology. In terms of our antireligious critique,
such movements fulfill all the social and psychological func-
tions of religion in other situations of human history a point
that has been made by many critics of Communism. As Karl
Jaspers put it, Marxism, like other movements of this type,,
derives its psychological impetus from the urge "to liberate
oneself from liberty" 7 in other words, a flight back into
religious tutelage. There are religious critics of modem athe-
ism who, following Luther's argument that man worships
either God or an idol, have maintained that this process of
what might be called remythologization occurs inevitably. It
seems to this writer that such argument is unfair and not in
accordance with the facts. It is quite possible, as many exam-
ples of Western thought in the last two centuries show, to
reject religion without constructing a synthetic one to serve as
a substitute. It is possible for men to live without worshiping
anything. It is their own uneasiness and lack of imagination
that leads religious critics to deny this possibility. Yet it is
precisely this possibility that interests us here.

To reject the comforts and security of religious submission
is to have the courage to admit the precariousness of existence
and to face the silence of the universe. This certainly does not
mean that one must resign oneself to meaninglessness or that
one must give up the quest for meaning. It does mean the
surrender of illusionary meanings and false reassurances. This
also involves a relentless intellectual honesty which abhors
bad faith and seeks always to be conscious to the fullest pos-
sible clarity. Such intellectual honesty forces the admission
that there are many questions, even vital questions, of which
we are ignorant, Such intellectual honesty makes impossible

THE PRECARIOUS VISION

the postures of absolute certainty which constitute the stock-
in-trade of so many of the religious. One then dares to emerge
from the warm familiarity of the sacred caverns and finds
the courage to look calmly at the cold constellations of the
night* The antireligious critique that concerns us here is an
invitation to this confrontation with silence. It is at the same
time a passionate protest against the bad faith of what goes
on in the caves.

The descriptions of religious prof essionalism which we have
put into the mouth of^ourMonsignor Racciati in the pre-
ceding chapter fall under the category of bad faith in this
sense. It should be made veiy clear that*this category is not
intended to cover the entire domain of religious experience.
It is quite possible, within our critique, to admit the possibility
of an experience which gives inner certainty about religious
affirmations- However such experience is ultimately to be ex-
plained, whether it is or is not a genuine contact with meta-
physical realities, such experience need not have the character
of bad faith. However, it is equally clear that the great
majority of people posturing as authorities on the mysteries
of life actually know no more than everybody else. This is
especially true of people whose professional competence de-
mands this posture. The antireligious critique constitutes a
challenge to these alleged authorities to prove their case. It
refuses to be intimidated by the paraphernalia of the witch
doctor. It perceives the mystagogue as a human being and
asks for a humanly intelligible account of his mystifications.
It refuses to forget that he has a name, a certain parentage
and biography, and perhaps a weak stomach into the bargain.
By thus humanizing the religious situation it need not destroy
the possibility of genuine mystery. These are men whose child-
hood ambitions and gastrointestinal difficulties cannot change
our respect. They are very few. In them, once in a long time,
we may sense the human touching upon realities other than
and beyond itself. The fully human understanding of these
men only underlines the strangeness of what has befallen
them. We may then believe or continue to doubt their message,

ANTIRELICIOUS CRITIQUE 153

but we shall respect them in either case. In most cases, how-
ever, this humanizing perspective directly challenges the claim
to superiority being made. The debunking consequences of
both social-scientific and psychological (not necessarily psy-
choanalytic) understanding make this abundantly clear. What
seemed like iron conviction before now takes on the character
of compulsive reiteration of those propositions without which
one cannot afford to live. What seemed like overwhelming
majesty now appears as the art of the impresario. The com-
munity of believers reveals itself as a society for mutual re-
assurance. Even the crudest economic and political factors are
seen to be operative in realms that had been thought of as
purest metaphysics. Thus it is not simple barbarism when the
psychologist raises questions about the mother of the Emperor
Constantine or when the sociologist, looking at the Council
of Nicea, asks who paid the bus fare of the delegates. These
questions radically humanize the situation and thus show it
up under a new perspective, that comic perspective of which
we spoke before. The clash of rival gods is seen as a comedy
of very human pretensions. In facing the religious authorities
our critique will ask quite simply, "Who are you?" And it will
address the same question to the competing establishments*
Any person with the semblance of profound convictions is
likely to appear as a tower of truth to others who do not have
such certitudes. It is not an accident that the most rapidly
growing religious bodies in America today are those with the
most grandiose pretensions to absolute tightness. A naturally
honest skeptic will tend to attribute his own honesty to others.
Their conviction will then appear all the more impressive.
This is the strength of a Jesuit among doubting Protestants,
of a Communist among tolerantly undogmatic Westerners, of
a recently psychoanalyzed person at a gathering of those whose
frustrations have not been authoritatively catalogued. It might
be mentioned in passing, for the benefit of uneasy skeptics,
that one of the best ways of counteracting this effect is to
bring together rival claimants to the role of oracle. There is
every chance that, like two primadonnas at a party, they will

I FA THE PRECARIOUS VISION

neutralize each other, In one's own mind If not In social inter-
action, and the normal business of life can then continue. In
other words, introduce your best Jesuit to your best Commu-
nist, arrange a rendezvous between Freudian and Jungian, let
your fundamentalist friend be trapped by Jehovah's Witnesses.
What we have called humanization may occur then with great
rapidity.

The antireligious critique recalls to us that we are all human
beings. We do not know where we came from or where we
are going. We were children once, discovering a strange world.
We played games, we cried and laughed, we wanted to be
Indian chiefs and gangster bosses. We have bad dreams now,
we get sick when we eat certain foods, we have impossible
fantasies of sexual fulfillment, we want everybody to listen to
us with great respect. And very soon we shall all be dead*
When a man comes who claims to hold the keys to the inner
secret of this astounding journey, we first of all recognize him
as a man. We recognize that it is another man who is speak-
ing, who was also a child and with whom other foods disagree
and whose wife is very fat and who will die himself. We may
then listen to what he has to say. But we shall know that it is
a man like ourselves we are listening to. Most of those who
profess religious convictions cannot stand this attitude very
well. Having identified with their particular divinity, they re-
gard the attitude as an act of sacrilege in itself and as proof
of the metaphysical depravity of the one who maintains it.
This is why so much of religious apologetics is undertaken in
bad faith. The one to whom the apologia is made is defined a
priori as outside the circle of illumination. Whatever he says,
therefore, is listened to only insofar as it can later be used
against him. Thi* .^aalJi^^ -fatf CQT1 v<arsj[rm -

One does not wish to understand but to conquer. Again, the
reasons for this are most human ones indeed.

Although this is not an important concern of this essay, it
might be stressed here that the antireligious critique would do
away drastically with the various uses of psychological argu-
mentation by religious apologians. This argumentation usually

ANTIRELIGIOUS CRITIQUE 155

hinges on some conception of religions needs being present in
human beings and then of religion as supplying the satisfac-
tion of these needs. Whether these religious needs will then
be reduced to some other psychological force ( say, the Freud-
ian libido in its countless avatars) or be considered as a
psychological reality in its own right (say, in the Jungian
theory of archetypes), it remains by definition impossible to
draw any ontological conclusions from these psychological
data. In simpler words, the psychologist can never go beyond
saying that we have certain needs, a statement that tells us
nothing whatever about the existence or nature of that which
we allegedly need. On scientific grounds there may also be
very serious doubts about the legitimacy of any such psycho-
logical statement. But our antireligious critique need not go
into the scientific controversies on the matter and can restrict
itself to the inner logic of the argumentation. It can then be
assumed, for the sake of the argument, that such religious
needs do indeed exist Religion then becomes a function of
our psychosomatic being in a manner analogous to sexuality.
In other words, one is religious in the same way that one likes
brunettes. We happen to know that brunettes exist and that
some of them, at any rate, may assist in the realization of
our sexual fantasies. We have no such assurance with regard to
the religious beings which we are supposed to need. It is a wild
speculation indeed that would assume that the world is so
arranged as to satisfy our needs and to protect us from frustra-
tion. To reason thus would make the instinct for survival an
argument for the impossibility of death. Such reasoning in
itself calls for a psychological explanation. If the antireligious
critique would venture at all into the realm of psychological
argumentation^ it would most likely do so with the category
of bad faith. In other words, the most important psychological
problem in this area concerns the psychology of self-deception.
However, our most important concern here is not with bad
faith in the individual psyche but with bad faith existing in
society, as a social function. Our interest in the antireligious
critique is centered at this point. Within the perspective in-

156 THE PKECAKIOUS VISION

dicated In the last two chapters, religion as a social function

becomes subjected to a radical moral judgment.

actions undertaken in bad faith. Religion sanctifie^owgOH^

any

"

values held withultimate^

human conven-

antireligious critique, as it began in the eighteenth
century, is empirically entitled to its interpretation of religion
as an obstacle to human liberty. The critique is wrong in re-
garding this fact to be universal. There are liberating move-
ments that sail under religious flags. Yet there can be little
doubt about the overwhelmingly conservative and inhibitory
effect of religion in most periods of history. Nor would it seem
a coincidence that the decline of organized religion in its hold
over the Western mind has contributed to the growth of
tolerance^ intellectual freedom, and creativity, and to the
realization of those human rights commonly identified with
the democratic creed.

We might mention here one argument, often used by
religious apologians, which we would also feel inclined to sul>
suoie under our over-all heading of bad faith. This is the
argument that the turning away from religion must lead to
moral anarchy and that recent history demonstrates this fact.
This is ironic in view of the fact that precisely those phenom-
ena usually adduced as evidence for this claim are the very
ones that our aotireligious critique would recognize as au-
thentic religious apparitions for example, the rise of radical
eschatologies of both fascist and Marxist varieties. The reason
why Communism has so much appeal in many parts of the
world is exactly its religious quality. It is the same religious
quality which makes Communism intolerantly certain of its
goals and dogmatically self-righteous in its atrocities. The
greater tolerance and scrupulosity of the West are as directly
related to the Western uncertainties as to religious convic-

ANTIRELIGIOUS CRITIQUE 157

tions. The irony becomes profound when we reflect upon the
fact that Communism despises the West for being religious,
while the West detests the Communists as irreligious material-
ists. As to the historical dimension of this religious apologia,,
even a most casual glance at the long record of religious
cutthroats from the Hebrew Judges to the Dancing Dervishes
will show up the spuriousness of this argumentation.

But the point at which such bad faith becomes positive
indecency is when the assertion is made that without religion
(preferably the religion of the person making the assertion)
men become anarchists without morality or restraints. This
position can irst of all be seen in its clear light by looking at it
in the sociological perspective of Chapter 6. In this perspec-
tive, of course, it has a certain validity. That is, it is quite true
that religion supports the moral values of a society and gives
moral equilibrium to its individual members. Thus a young
person liberating himself from the restraints of, say, a narrow
fundamentalist background will have to think through what
the moral imperatives are which previously he had taken for
granted. If this is anarchy, so is every step into freedom. The
same problem, of course, is faced by a young Communist
who begins to doubt his religious background and, as happens
to such of this type as can escape to the West, is now facing
the task of rebuilding his life without the shackles of the
Marxist ideology. But the person who says that without re-
ligion there can be no morality is only convicting himself in
making this statement. For what he is really saying is that to
himself morality must have the quality of magically guaran-
teed givenness. In other words, he is proclaiming his own lack
of freedom, his own incapacity to seek a moral order in a
world where nothing is guaranteed and very little is given. By
contrast, the antireligious critique will point to those who
have no such delusions and who yet try to meet the ethical
demands of their existence as responsible human beings. It
will further suggest to the religious apologians that the argu-
ment between faith and unbelief will have to be carried on
on different ground.

PRECARIOUS VISION

A similar refection applies to the argumentation, particularly
popular among so-called neo-orthodox theologians, of present-
ing religion (again, usually their own) as the only tonic against
despair. Sartre answered this argument briefly and to the point
when it was used against him. He suggested to his religious
critics that they ought not to confuse their desperation with
his. Again, the apologian who uses this argument convicts
himself. He is, in fact, saying that he cannot face life at all
unless he puts on the spectacles of his particular religious
coloration. He admits that religion functions for him as a
narcotic does for the addict Against this humanly distasteful
position we would bring into evidence the work of, for ex-
ample, Albert Camus. 8 The rejection of supernatural comfort
here leads not to a nihilistic despair at all. On the contrary,
it opens the way to a courageous acceptance and affirmation
of life, including in this acceptance the tragic dimensions
of existence, and a serious quest for answers to the pressing
ethical problems.

Perhaps the essential malady of these religious arguments is
the attempt to use criteria other than truth in dealing with
questions of truth. Perhaps this malady is the heart of re-
ligious bad faith. Whatever religious propositions we take,
we confront thereby a burning question of truth. "God exists"
yes or BO? Is the statement true or is it not? No other
criterion but that of truth respects the dignity of such a
proposition, The kind of religions apologetics we have just
looked at assumes the truth of the proposition before it even
sets out and then tries to substantiate the assumption by
arguments that have nothing to do with the truth such as the
usefulness of the proposition to the maintenance of law and
order, or the apologian's need for the proposition in terms of
its moral inspiration or despair-preventing efficacy, or perhaps
even the hoary antiquity of the proposition and the relative
novelty of its denial. In many cases the criterion of happiness
is substituted for that of truth. "God exists" "Will I be
happier if this is true? Or will society? If yes, then the proposi-

ANTIREIJGIOUS CRITIQUE

tion must be affirmed/' To this line of reasoning the anti-
religious critique will retort that truth and happiness have
nothing to do with each other, that there are very unhappy
truths, and that this kind of hedonistic pragmatism is un-
worthy of those claiming the existence of a God whose
attributes include perfect truth. On the contrary, intellectual
honesty demands that we pay special attention to those truths
that contradict our aspirations toward happiness. We shall all
die. This is certainly true. And it is the most unhappy o
truths.

This antireligious critique has t>een quite important in
Europe as part of the intellectual defense against Commu-
nism. One could mention here not only Camus but critics of
Communism such as Koestler, Malraux, or Jules Monnerot.
Against the religious fanaticism of the Communists is placed
the moderation and the restraint of the uncommitted mind
that is open to the world in freedom. 9 But this critique* for
different reasons, is very important in the American situa-
tion. Still moving on the crest of the postwar "religious re-
vival/" practically unchallenged on its home territory except
for the silent indifference of the recalcitrant nonjoiBers, the
American "civic religion" continues to live in the delusion
that the society coold not exist without it and that the present
marriage of convenience will be an eternal union. Not only is "
this delusion rarely challenged in America (where, if this is
possible, there are even fewer atheists than Communists ) y
but all the authoritative voices proclaim religion as the neces-
sary foundation of the American way of life and next only to
the H-bomb as America's most powerful weapon of defense.
The temptations of bad faith in such a situation may be well-
nigh irresistible, especially for those who have a vested interest
in the religious boom. Where religion is safely embedded in
political establishment and social respectability, the antire-
ligious critique offers the unexpected possibility of an honest
look at reality. Its debunking thus becomes a moral impera-
tive. At this point we find a strange and Instructive affinity

l6o THE FEECARIOUS VISION

between the antireligious critique and the prophetic mission
of the Christian faith. It will be our task in the last part of
this essay to look at this affinity in greater detail and to draw
from it certain consequences for Christian existence in society.

PART THREE

Exodus

9. Christian Faith and the Critique of

Religion

THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IS NOT RELIGION IN THE SENSE OF OUR
ANALYSIS. THE CHRISTIAN FAITH IS CLOSER TO THE ANTIRE-
LIGIOUS CRITIQUE THAN TO RELIGION. IN FACT, THE CHRIS-
TIAN FAITH PROVIDES A RADICAL ANTIRELIGIOUS CRITIQUE OF ITS

OWN.

There are certain kinds of insight which had best remain
private. If our argument had to stop at the point it reached
in the last chapter, there might be good grounds for subsuming
it under this advice. It may be true, indeed, that the debunk-
ing of fictions is a step toward freedom. At the same time,
there is good reason to be pessimistic about men's capacities
for and inclinations toward such a goal Also, he who tears
down Potemkin villages is morally obligated to linger on as
the inhabitants gaze down into the precipice that had previ-
ously been hidden from their eyes. Unless the debunker has
the inner substance not only to observe but to be prepared to
speak helpfully in this situation there is something morally
distasteful about the debunking enterprise. Applying these
considerations to the present essay, we would regard the
analysis (including the amount of polemic and satire that
was felt to be necessary for its accomplishment) as the prelude
to an act of affirmation. In this case the basis for the affirma-
tion is given in the Christian faith.

Yet it may be advisable to add one other word of clarifica-
tion. It is a common practice of preachers to jolt their
audience out of their restful dozing by some peculiarly violent
line of argumentation, but all this is followed by an emotion-
ally soothing sequel which exempts all present company from
the indictment and perhaps even admits later that it put

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND CRITIQUE OF RELIGION 163

certain things a little strongly in order to make a point. The
writer of this essay would emphatically disavow such an in-
tention. What has been said so far is to be taken in the sense
in which it was said and no other. In other words, the con-
tent of these last chapters is not intended to provide a with-
drawal from the argument but rather to carry the argument
further.

In this and the following chapter we would look backward
on the course of the argument, beginning with the problem
given to Christian faith by the antireligious critique. We
would then look at the relationship of Christian faith to the
bad faith made possible by the fictitiousness of society, and
then ask some very broad questions about the significance for
this faith of the precarious vision of social existence. In these
considerations what is said, as will be clear, is said from the
position of Christian faith. It will be clarified later in what
sense this position is held as against the varieties of bad
faith discussed before.

The crucial point of the relationship between Christian
faith and the antireligious critique is to be found in a theo-
logical proposition. The proposition states that the revelation
of God in Tesus Christ (which is the object of Christian
faithj-js something very different from religion (which is the
object of the antireligious critique. The consequence of this
proposition is that, far from being affected by this critique,
the Christian faith has important affinities with it. Needless
to say, this is not an original proposition. The most com-
prehensive statement of the proposition in contemporary
theology is undoubtedly that of Karl Earth. 1 In the terms of
the thinking behind this essay, however, the writer would
rather point to two other thinkers for the general relationship
of Christian faith and religion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 2 for
the relationship of Christianity and atheism to Simone Weil 3
with full cognizance of the fact, it ought to be added
quickly, that these two authors are strongly contradictory in
many aspects of their thought. It is certainly suggestive that
these two names are frequently given in both Europe and

164 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

America when people speak of truly contemporary witnesses
to the faith that of the young German theologian executed
by the Nazis a few weeks before the end of World War II and
that of the strange Jewish expatriate from France who died in
1943 * n ^ er English exile. It would be difficult in this
century to find two other thinkers with that combination of
merciless intellectual honesty and passionate commitment to
Christianity ? or any that would share such clear consciousness
of the realities of the modem world. Finally, it seems to this
writer that no consideration of religion as it exists in society
can by-pass the disturbing shadow of Kierkegaard's attack on
the Danish church of his time. 4 It should be required reading
especially for those who speak glibly of the "rediscovery of
the church*" in our own time.

It goes without saying that the question of Christianity and
religion involves massive theological problems. It is not the
task of this essay to solve these problems. We would rather
see how the above-mentioned proposition relates to the socio-
logical and moral perspective that has emerged in our argu-
ment so far. We would look at the proposition not as part
of a process of theological system-building but as providing
sharp illumination to our own problem, which has a socio-
logical rather than a theological point of origin. In other words*
we want to ask some relatively simple questions: Society
being a structure of fictions, what is Christian existence in
society? Religion being closely related to the bad faith of
the social ictions, what is the relationship of Christian faith
and religion? In what way is the Christian faith, then, rel-
evant to being a fully conscious and morally responsible
participant in the social drama?

Christian faith means to believe the proclamation of God's
revelation in Jesus Christ. Its point of origin and its only
lasting point of reference is in the person of Jesus Christ.
Of course we know very well what immense streams of
religious thought and life have come from this point, pro-
viding power for the erection of magnificent interpretations
of the world, of mighty institutions, and (almost as if in

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND CRITIQUE OF RELIGION 165

passing) of an entire civilization. But Christian faith remains
bound to this one point where it confronts the person of
Jesus Christ asking the timeless question, "Who do you say
that I am?" Christian faith before Easter and after it is
contained in the answer (indeed, is the answer) that Peter
gave to the question at Caesarea Philippi "You are the
Christ, the Son of the living God/ 9 And after Easter it be-
comes what may well have been the first Christian confession
of faith in the religious underworlds of the Roman Empire
"Jesus Christ has risen from the dead/ 7 Beyond all the
relativities of history, both question and answer retain the
same significance. Are we abandoned in the boundless ocean
of being or is there a God coming toward us out of the envelop-
ing mystery? Do we confront a God who is pure majesty or a
God who enters into the travail of creation? Can we address
this God? Dare we hope? Christian faith is the affirmation
that God has decisively entered into our destiny, has broken
into history and begun within it the redemption of man from
all bondage, but especially from the bondage of guilt and
death. Christian faith affirms that this divine invasion has a
name, place, and date. The name is that of Jesus, the place
and date are given by the span of His life on earth. The
Christian faith further affirms that the God who is beyond
the spiral nebulae has taken upon Himself the shape and the
fate of one biped species of mammals on an insignificant
planet in the immensity of the galaxies an affirmation that
either is rank madness or finds its simple explanation in the
assertion that this God loves His creation, that His essence is
that love, and that only for the sake of such love did He call
the cosmos out of nothingness. In Jesus Christ we receive
one brief glimpse of this divine mystery, but the mystery has
such magnitude of splendor that this one glimpse is all we
need to light our path for the remainder of our days. We
can now address God because we find that He has already
addressed us. And we can dare to hope. Christian faith, then,
is the affirmation that death is not the last word about human
existence, that there is a human destiny beyond tragedy, that

i66 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

our encounter with Jesus Christ has a sequel beyond the
grave. In the light of this encounter we look differently at
ourselves and the world around us. Both we and the world
appear under the double aspect of sin and grace, magnificence
and degradation, sentence of death and promise of glory.
Such is the proclamation and the faith which affirms it.
Whether we can participate in this affirmation or not, we
must come to terms with the stupendousness of the claim,
This proclamation comes to us from the outside. It does
not well up from some inner depths of religious experience.
It does not concern so-called spiritual realities within us,
It concerns the person of Jesus Christ and certain specific
events concerning Him, all events which confront us from
the outside. In other words, the Christian faith is not a spirit-
ual concern. But something more drastic is involved in the
relationship between Christian faith and religion. The re-
ligious enterprise of human history, not only in its crasser
forms but above all in its exhibitions of greatness and pro-
fundity, constitutes man's attempt to reach out into the
universe and grasp the divine. The proclamation of God's
revelation in Jesus Christ pronounces a radical judgment over
this attempt. It declares the entire enterprise to be bankrupt.
Whether this means that there is no point of contact between
revelation and religion, or whether such contact is possible,
is not our concern here (this question, of course, is still a
very live theological issue, as expressed in the controversy on
the matter between Karl Barth and Emil Brunner). What is
important for our argument is that God's coming into the
world in Christ prejudges any attempt of ours to come to
Him. It is here, at this one point of Jesus Christ, that God
has allowed Himself to be found. The religious enterprise
continues to search for Him elsewhere. What the proclama-
tion of Jesus Christ demands is faith. The religious enterprise
circumvents this demand and seeks to meet God on other
grounds. In other words, religion is lack of faith. And the
Christian proclamation passes judgment on religion as lack of
faith. 5

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND CRITIQUE OF RELIGION 1 67

That the encounter with the Biblical God 7 "be it IB the
New Testament or the Old, involves judgment of the world
is a commonplace of Protestant rhetorics today. But "world"
here means all too frequently all that which is outside the
religious community of the one who takes himself for the
spokesman of the divine judgment. The abomination of
modern secularism and all sorts of other characteristics of
contemporary society is then taken to be a religious judgment
on an antireligious world. Against this conception it is very
important to emphasize that God's judgment first and fore-
most applies to religion, much more so and long before it
also applies to those not concerned with religious matters
at all. In other words, God's first quarrel is with Israel If
this were clearly understood there would be much less of the
futile and often reactionary condemnation of the modem
world that seems to be a favorite pastime of many religions
spokesmen.

It seems that this aGtirgligious character of God's dealings
with men is a consistent theme in Hie BiBlTcat tri5Ipon7 Or
to piiT^^m^SStKnt wor3s ? the ancient Hebrew knife of
circumcision continues to cut away at man's religious roots.
In many ways the Old Testament (and not only the prophetic
movement in it) is a story of God's denial of man's religious
needs. There can be little doubt that the non-Hebrew re-
ligions of the ancient Mediterranean world satisfied these
needs quite well, certainly infinitely better than the inexpedi-
ent harangues that men like Amos or Isaiah had to offer. In
these other religions man was safely held in the recurring
cycles of nature and its divine forces. Through his body and
blood he was linked securely to the life-giving earth. Religion
provided for him a cosmos in which both men and gods
were at home. It is just this religious security which the terri-
ble Hebrew God is bent on undermining. And so the He-
brews were denied the comforts of the old orgies, of the
mystic participation in the rhythms of the fields and the
Mils, of the pantheon filling the universe with divine beings.

l68 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

It was a sharp knife Indeed that cut them off from the

life-giving mysteries of the past. And it was a truly terrifying
God that drove them into the wilderness to listen to strange
words under a strange mountain. The fleshpots of Egypt
were far more than material goods. Much more importantly
there were the spiritual fleshpots, all the comforts of the gods
of the Nile. The memory of these fleshpots stayed with Israel,
e\ r en after the encounter at Sinai and the conquest of Canaan,
as a persisting, sometimes irresistible temptation. 6

It was not the world that Israel left, not the world in the
profane or secular sense, but the religious world, the world of
the gods. It was not so much profane wickedness as religious
idolatry that offered the most serious threat to Israeli covenant
with God. Under the aspect of this God, all religious efforts
are ultimately the building of idols. The characteristic feature
of an idol is its manufacture by human hands and minds,
THhe^ ..... God of Issadl

is Jjt^ man or anywhere within thenatural

order ofth cosmos, "fl^ls the creator (5f^B5Hrman and

__

cosmos. His worship the opposite of idolatry. The psalmist
expresses this opposition of creator and idol when he says,
ls For all the gods of the peoples are idols; but the Lord
made the heavens" (Ps. 96:5). It is not at all a fanciful
interpretation if we subsume under this same judgment of
idolatry the many efforts by which man has sought, by his
own activity, to satisfy his religious cravings. The peoples
have more idols, and more religions, than there are pebbles
of sand "&tf the Lord made the heavens/" In this "but"
lies the judgment over the religious enterprise in all its
forms,

In trying to understand the relationship of Christian faith
and religion we thus do well to look backward in history. We
may recall that great divorce which the Hebrew God estab-
lished between Israel and the luxurious religious world sur-
rounding it. We recall that it was not only Icings but priests
that the prophets thundered against and priests of Yahweh

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND CRITIQUE OF RELIGION 169

as well as priests of Baal. And, above all, we recall that it
was a relmoij^etmie foiuaJiich Jesus of

^ e secu ^ r power played
second fiddle in this enterprise. Finally, as Protestants we
might do well to recall that the witness of the Reformation
was directed not against the world but against the church. The
old fieshpots continue to lore and the history of Christianity is
one of religious restorations. Yet whenever the Christian
faith breaks forth once more from this Babylonian captivity
of religious forms, it threatens those religious forms. We then
find such passionate witness as that of Kierkegaard against
the religious institutions of his day: "The official worship of
God (with the claim of being the Christianity of the New
Testament) is ? Christianly,, a counterfeit^ a forgery." 7

As Frederick Neumann once put it in a lecture on Ecclesi-
astes, we encounter God in the Bible as Him who resists us,
The claim of the Christian (and, indeed, of the entire
Biblical) proclamation is a claim to truth. This truth is
outside myself. It is a hard element of reality, against which
my wishes or needs come up as against rock. It is truth over
against all my religious aspirations. If I affirm this claim in
faith, then it is for its truth that I affirm it not because of
its psychological or social utility. To worship God as any-
thing less than truth must be to offend Him most seriously*
Either the Christian faith is true or it is nothing at all
that merits our attention.

We may now return to the preliminary remarks on religion
which we made in Chapter I* Religion may be defined here
quite simply as providing ideas that transcend the individual
and are capable of giving ultimate meaning to his life. If the
antireligious critique brings out the spnriousness involved in
the religious enterprise, the Christian critique of religon
brings upon the enterprise an even more radical judgment
This is well expressed in Bartfa^s essay on Ludwig Feuerbach
in which the significance of the latte/s Essence of Christianity
(a work which provided the cornerstone of Marxist atheism)

THE PKECAKIOUS VISION

for Christian theology Is affirmed. In this essay Earth main-
tains that only the confrontation with the living God of the

Christian faith makes it possible to challenge Feuerbach's

anthropocentric interpretation of religion:

"One had better look out if one picks ep the only weapon that

will take care of Feuerbach, No one may strike him with it unless
he has himself been hit by it This weapon is no mere argument
which one exploits in apologetics, it should rather be a ground
on which one can stand, and with fear and trembling allow to
speak for itself. Whether or not we stand on this ground will be
tested by our answer to this question: are we capable of admitting
to Feuerbach that he is entirely right in his interpretation of
religion insofar as it relates not only to religion as an experience
of evil and mortal mart, but also to the *high/ the 'ponderable,*
and even the 'Christian* religion of this man? Are we willing to
admit that even in our relation to God, we are and remain liars,
and that we can lay claim to His truth, His certainty, His salvation
as {grace and only as grace?"

In other words, front the ground of Christian faith Earth
finds himself assenting to Feuerbach's interpretation of re-
ligion as a human projection. In this agreement we find the
crucial relationship of Christian faith and the antireligious
critique.

It is now important for us to look at the implications of
such a Christian critique of religion in terms of the problems
raised in the second part of this essay* One of the most
serious indictments of religion by its critics lies in the way in
which religion is used to give an illusion of security in a very
insecure world, an operation that we have felt entitled to caU
one of bad faith. It may thus be in order to take up this
charge first of aH It was one that vitally concerned Bonhoeffer
in his thoughts toward the end of his life* Bonhoeffer was
struck by the rapacity of modem man to get along quite
wel without the dens ex machina of religious interpretation-
It is this capacity which finds expression in Bonhoeffer^s
concept of the "world come of age/* As fewer and fewer

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND CEmQUE OF RELIGION

areas of life are felt to be in need of the religious hypothesis,
religion is relegated to the faraway borderline situations of
human experience. This is how Bonhoeffer characterized the
hopeless character of this development:

"Religious people speak of God when human perception is (often
just from laziness) at an end, or human resources fail: it is really
always the Deus ex machina they call to their aid, either for the
so-called solving of insoluble problems or as support in human
failure always, that is to say, helping out human weakness or on
the borders of human existence. Of necessity, that can only go on
until men can, by their own strength, push those borders a little
further, so that God becomes superfluous as a Deus ex machina.** w

Against this relegation of God to those realms of mystery
where men feel the need for an emotionally supportive hy-
pothesis, Bonhoeffer maintains that the Christian faith speaks
of God not on the borders but in the middle of life. This
is another way of saying that the Christian faith is not a
"religious concern." It does not set out to produce "spiritual"
life, does not meet "spiritual" needs or aspirations. In Christ,
God became incarnate in the world, the real world, not some
phantasmagora of the spirit. Both incarnation and resurrec-
tion took place in that same real world. The risen Christ is
Lord of all the world, not just of a certain mystical sector of
it. That is, either the Christian faith is relevant to all of life
or it is not relevant at all

With even greater sharpness Bonhoeffer refected the posi-
tion that religion (the Christian religion or any other) be of-
fered as a medicine to combat despair* an activity of many
theologians that he described aptly as "rummaging in garbage
cans/* This involves a kind of psychological blackmail by
which the "world come of age"* is to be pressured back into
religious tutelage. Bonhoeffer describes the activity of these
latter-day evangelists in contemptuous terms;

'"Wherever there is health, strength, security, simplicity, they spy
luscious fruit to gnaw at or to lay their pernicious eggs in. They
make it their object first of alt to drive men to inward despair,

THE PRECARIOUS VISION

and then it is all theirs. That is secularized methodism, And
whom does it touch? A small number of intellectuals, of de-
generates, of people who regard themselves as the most important
thing in the world and hence like looking after themselves. The
ordinary man who spends his everyday life at work, and with his
family, and of course with all kinds of hobbies and other interests
too., is not affected. He has neither time nor inclination for think-
ing about his intellectual despair and regarding his modest share
of happiness as a trial, a trouble or a disaster." 11

Bonhoeffer was greatly concerned with the inability of re-
ligious spokesmen to be relevant to the problems of the
working classes, but we would suggest that his remarks are
relevant beyond this particular social milieu. There is an in-
creasing number of other people who refuse to patronize the
"religious drugstore/" as Bonhoeffer once called it (not to
apply the nastier term of "religions comfort station" which
he uses elsewhere). One is reminded here of Camus* pas-
sionate rejection of religion as a betrayal of the ordinary
happiness of ordinary men. Bonhoeffer saw conectijMfliat
there is a fundamental mde
Igious commitment via the detour of despair. It so happens
that some men don't despair so easily. To them such religion
has nothing to say, except perhaps to revile them for their
failure to kneel down in the muck.

While these observations are most pertinent in terms of
the psychological functions of religion (and the bad faith
involved in so-called religious needs), we would maintain a
very similar relationship of the Christian faith to the social
functions of religion. We have discussed the important way
in which religion validates and sanctifies social roles* We
would suggest, quite analogous to the statements by ifartfa

it-is

true to iteelf (&tb when it remains on

..
, Christian faith puts in question the assump-

tions* the self-righteousness, and with these the bad faith
of the social carnival The pretensions of the masquerade

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND CRITIQUE OF RELIGION 173

collapse in the encounter with the God of truth. Men stand
before God as men and as nothing but men. The protective
armor of their many roles melts away in that instant of
judgment. Kings and beggars, judges and thieves, archbishops
and revolutionaries share in the same judgment and are
offered the same grace. We may find here, as it were, a
sociological dimension of Jesus" saying that we must be-
come like children. It is a child that says, 'The emperor is
naked!" The perspective of the Christian faith, in very much
the same way, denies the emperor his robes and addresses
him as a naked man.

Religion functions in society as a basis of morality, of law
and order, of respectability, of a sound and sober way of
life. Especially in America today this one sentence constitutes
the total creed of many self-consciously "churched" people,
and not a few of their so-called religious leaders. This is why
considerations such as the above are of particular importance
for the contemporary American situation. For the consequence
of this understanding of the Christian faith is, of course, that
the latter cannot be any of these things. What is more,
when it is believed to be that, it not only threatens to be-
come bad faith but (what is infinitely worse) takes on the
character of blasphemy. For God is truth and wants to be
worshiped in truth.

Christian faith cannot b^ ffcf* ^sfs of morality. Different
societies have different and contradictory systems of morals.
Religion supports all of them, as it functions in these different
societies. Its social function is subjected to the general rela-
tivity of values, beliefs, ideas of men. The love of God,
as it reveals itself in Jesus Christ, is not a new or superior
system of morality. Before the cross of Jesus Christ all systems
of morality are relativized and judged. The Christian life is
not obedience to a new law, but a living out of God's love in
faith, which makes it possible to freely seek moral solutions
to the ever-new problems that face us. The Christian faith
does not glorify lawlessness or immorality. Yet, between the
sinner and the Pharisee, it was the sinner whose company

174 T^ PRECARIOUS VISION

Jesus sought Whenever Christianity is presented as. the basis
of morality, in the sense of society, God's free grace is rejected
in favor of a law made by men.

Christis^^ Again,

this (JoeTnoT^ is some sort of revolu-

tionary doctrine which seeks the overthrow of existing social
structures. But, as with morality, any system of law and order
is relativized, judged, and thus declared to be less than ultimate
before the cross of Christ. Nor is it unimportant that
this same cross was erected in history by the forces of law
and order, God came into the world not as power and majesty
but in lowliness, humility, and suffering. In the passion of
Christ the contempt and oppression of all the victims of
social order is thrust upon the shoulders of the incarnate God.
From that moment on all violence against men becomes
violence against Him. Behind the face of every victim waits
the spat-upon face of Calvary. There is no social order without
violence. There can, therefore, be no social order which is
ratified in the sign of the cross. Any talk of Christian
societies, Christian states, Christian economies (or, for that
matter, of Christian revolutions and Christian futures) is
a betrayal of that cross* Christians, like other men, are caught
in the ambiguities and relativities of the human condition.
Like other man, they are compelled to seek moral paths
through the turbulent fungle of human affairs. They have
not been given the luxury of a supernaturally guaranteed
thruway,

Jaith cannot be the basis of respectability. In
different societies there are different criteria by which ^f atus
and prestige are determined. There are many (including
ours) in which religion is part of the equipment required to
furnish a socially acceptable habitat, Such a situation puts
the atheist and even the avowed agnostic not only outside the
pale of the religious community but also outside the con-
fines of the world of respectability. Thus in our society the
man in the gray flannel suit who commutes between his urban
pursuit of money and his suburban haven of happiness is

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND CRITIQUE OF RELIGION 1 75

typical not only of respectability but also of our "churched''
population. Religion,. in itsjrolg as guard^
connives at greed,j:<^^

siMIty'"on"TKe""one hand, whil^onjih^^ its

s" Tof ^^a5t ofheterosexual bliss. Those who

refect suburban tastes and middle-class conceptions of work,
let alone those who challenge that one wife and 3.2 children
residing in a mortgaged split-level ranch house constitute
the apotheosis of sexual and emotional fulfillment, are not
only enemies of respectability but almost by definition enemies
of religion. Thus the so-called Christian churches of America's
great suburbia have nothing to say to the juvenile delinquent
of the inner city, nothing to the ethnic minorities that fail
or refuse to conform to the expectations of middle-class social
workers, nothing to the homosexual, and little to the divorced
person, nothing to any kind of social or political or even
intellectual rebel. Not only does religion become a middle-
class leisure-time activity, but its contents are marked by a
family cult in the private domain and a deadly conservatism
in the public one. 12 Again, this religious complex is revealed
as a denial of Christian faith when placed in confrontation
with the figure of Jesus Christ. It was not a coincidence that,
when God became man, He did so among the despised, the
rejected, those living on the sorrowful peripheries of society*
Prostitutes, criminals, political traitors, racial outcasts, va-
grants, and men of uncertain address or occupation in a word,
the permanent inhabitants of social-work case reports and
police blotters these were His customary companions. It
would be surprising indeed if His presence were now to be
found primarily among the respected and respectable, the
happy and healthy (not forgetting those who proudly exhibit
their "mental health"), all those whom everybody would con-
sider good prospects for credit cards and for church member-
ship. A reader of the New Testament would more likely look
for Him in a different section of town. Nor would it be
difficult to find that section* It is the one normally left un-

THE PKECARIOUS VISION

touched when church extension boards make surveys to scare
op new candidates for church membership.

be the basis of a sound and sober

of life always demands that the
metaphysical questiogsjjf hujnanjexistence be sealed ugjand
JtJot only must one give no thought to mystery,

^

anguish, and guilt, but there must be none of the
ecstasies that tear one away from the serious pursuit of socially
acceptable goals. Religion that fills the churches every Sunday
morning with organization men on a short leave from their
desks (one is tempted to say that they "have just stepped out
for a moment** ), accompanied by their domestic entourage, is
certainly consonant with this form of bad faith,

tried _ to show T ..... religion ^v*yr -.raHfe fhi^b^J^^ But the
Christian faith can only serve as an irritant in this tranquil
(and tranquflized) idyll Far from reassuring men in their
sound and sober arrangements, it tears them out of their
security, puts them and all that is theirs under judgment^
throws them up against all the metaphysical questions that
can be asked and thence into the luminous night of God's
desert ? a night stabbed with terror but also with pangs of
joy. Religion* as the guarantor of soundness and soberness,.
functions to prevent ecstasies. The Christian faith propels
men into the most shattering ecstasy conceivable. Religion
sanctifies the ground upon which men live their social roles.
The Christian faith makes men look on as the ground
trembles before God's presence. In other words, religion is
an excellent investment for a ftfflgrTmore

.mot, We shall have occasion in the nexl

chapter to ask farther what this singular social inconvenience
of the Christian faith means for the bad faith in which men
exist in society. For the moment we shall arrest ourselves a
little longer at the question of its relationship with the anti-
rdigious critique,

One of the main emphases of Bonhoeffer's later thought
was the assertion that the Christian life was secular, that the
Christian was not a homo reli^osus but a man simply being

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND CRITIQUE OF RELIGION 177

a man, that Christ was to be found in the world and not in
some religious enclaves within it. It was along the same lines
that Bonhoeffer felt that the Christian faith ought to welcome
the fact that this world has "come of age/' has emerged from
religious tutelage, and is able to stand on its own feet without
the support of a deus ex machina* It goes without saying
that Bonhoeffer was going directly against the prevailing
tendency in religious thought. While most spokesmen of the
churches habitually deplore the secularization of Western
civilization and, in one way or another, look back nostalgically
on the time when (supposedly) Christendom was a reality,
Bonhoeffer bids Christians to welcome secularization as an
expression of the maturity and liberty of modem man. He
also perceives (correctly, it seems to this writer) that secu-
larization has its historical roots in the Biblical tradition
itself. By denuding the cosmos of its divinity and placing
God totally beyond its confines, the Biblical tradition pre-
pared the way for the process we now call secularization. As
Max Weber has shown convincingly, Protestantism played a
key role in this modern development It was Protestantism
even more than Renaissance humanism which inaugurated
the great process which Weber called "disenchantment/' As
Weber put it:

"That great historic process in the development of religions, the
elimination of magic from the world which had begun with the
old Hebrew prophets and, in conjunction with Hellenistic scien-
tific thought, had repudiated all magical means to salvation as
superstition and sin, came here to its logical conclusion." 13

Weber's main interest, as is well known,, is the relationship
of this Protestant (and especially Calvinist) "disenchant-
ment" and the process of the "rationalization" of life that
made modern capitalism possible. However^ Weber's concept
has implications not only for economic behavior but for
the entire cultural development of the post-Reformation
world. It is, for example, very difficult to imagine the startling
rise of modern science and technology without the great

iy8 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

Protestant "disenchantment** of which Weber spoke. As the
sky Is emptied of angels It is opened to the calculations and
manipulations of the scientist. Nor is this a matter of pure
conjecture. Very much in the Weberian tradition on this
question, Robert Merton, for example, has given us illuminat-
ing insights into the role of Puritanism in the early develop-
ment of modern science in England, 1 * That some of the
effects of its own cultural role were never intended by Prot-
estantism is but one of the perpetual ironies of history. Just
as Calvin would have been horrified by what Weber called the
"spirit of capitalism/' so the early Puritan scientists in the
Royal Society would have been aghast at the "scientism" of
their successors- It remains true that for Protestants to damn
the secularization process has in it some of the qualities of
a dark-haired father blaming his daughter for not being a
blonde.

But there are more important reasons for desisting from the
damnation of the "world come of age" than a sense of
historical authorship on the part of Protestantism. Bonhoeffer
has expressed this in his call for a "secular/* a "religionless"
Christianity. Tbg. God of the . fTipgtigja. fqffh yants man*?
freedom. It is only thus that the miracle of the incarnation can
be understood. An old Jewish myth spealcs of the creation of
the world as an act of contraction (tmntswn} on the part of
God- It was necessary for God to take back into Himself
some of His Infinity so that there should be room for the
world to appear. Simone Weil has (probably lanknowingly)
given expression to this Jewish idea of tsimtsum^ but related
it to the Christian concept of God's kenosis (humiliation,
self-emptying) in Jesus Christ:

"On God's part creation is not an act of self-expansion but of
restraint and renunciation, God and all his creatures are less than
God alone. God accepted this diminution. He emptied a part
of his being from himself. He had already emptied himself in
this act of his divinity; that is why Saint John says that the Lamb
had been slain horn the beginning of the world. God permitted
the existence of things distinct from himself and worth infinitely

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND CRITIQUE OF RELIGION" 179

less than himself. By this creative act he denied himself, as Christ
has told us to deny ourselves. God denied himself for our sakes
in order to give us the possibility of denying ourselves for him.
This response,, this echo, which it is in our power to refuse, is the
only possible justification for the folly of love of the creative
act/' 13

We would suggest that man's "coming of age/ 7 his possible
liberation from the kind of religion which depends on illusion
and bad faith for its psychological motor forces, is part of the
same renunciation of God. It is God withdrawing, deliberately
not using His infinite powers to coerce man's infinitesimal
weakness, inviting man to respond freely and willingly to God's
address. In other words, Christian faith cannot gain from
man's bondage but must always welcome his liberations.

These considerations give us a striking perspective on the
antireligious critique, and beyond that on the phenomenon of
modern atheism. Suddenly it seems that atheism is

in essenti^ ways^tQ jhe Christian faith than that is to tlhfi .......

religious^enterprise against which atheism rebels. Simcme Weil
state3 this idea"luccinctly an3~ ....... brilliantly in the following

passage:

"Religion, in so far as it is a source of consolation, is a hindrance
to true faith: in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to
be atheistic with the part of myself which is not made for God.
Among those men in whom the supernatural part has not been
awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong/* 16 ,

It can be said, then, that atheism constitutes a negative
witness to the reality of God. It keeps pointing to this and
that in the world, and in men's minds, and keeps repeating
that God is absent. This, in itself, is an act of freedom which
comes close to the category of faith. As Karl Kraus, the
Austrian writer, put it, ". . . the true believers are those who
miss the divine/" 17 Butji^^
Christian faith proclaims..!? ^Qgi-^fa^ 1 ^-'^^ ......

whrnrgjio^ the cosmos but ronfrfmtejt as creatQLaad

redeemer. IB other words the Christian faith emphatically

l8o THE PRECARIOUS VISION

speaks of an absent God, who cannot be found and can-
not be used in any way except as He consents to be found
and offers Himself to be used for man's redemption. In-
sofar as atheism underlines the absence of God, it is a
negative witness to His transcendence and sovereignty. It
is even possible that atheism, in smashing the many factories
of idols, can serve as a praeparatio evangelica a path-maker
for the Gospel. We would suggest further that the anti-
religious critique, in its psychological and sociological de-
bunking of religion (we may add to this the historical and
philosophical debunking jobs which have similar conse-
quences ), is capable of serving as a kind of underside of
the prophetic mission of the Christian faith. Finally, we
would suggest to the Christian theologian that he may find
friends where he sought enemies, and enemies where he
went looking for friends.

Christian faith calls^ in this way for an exodus from the
worlds of Jllus jonjmd _bad faith. It is an exodus out of the
Egypt of deceptive social safety, but also out j*^ the Zion
af deceptive religious security. Of the two types of bondage
the second is more dangerous to man's relationship with God,
because, in addition to all other illusions, it adds the illusion
that he already rests in such a relationship. It is depressing,
but hardly surprising, that this kind of self-satisfied religious
satiation can be found also among those who interpret their
faith in heroic terms of daring and adventure. As both
Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Simone Weil saw very clearly, the
consciousness of abiding safely in the bosom of the church
(which Simone Weil called the "patriotism of the church"
and Bonhoeffer scathingly called "cheap grace") is one of
the most serious obstacles to an honest confrontation with
the Christian faith. Again we would suggest that the obstacle
lies in the way of an invitation to bad faith|The church pro-
claims, possesses a certain faith. This faith is addressed to each
individual, in his unique existence before God. He cannot hold
this faith except as the unique individual he is. As a substitute
to this painful acquisition of faith, the individual can instead

CHRISTIAN* FAITH AND CRITIQUE OF RELIGION l8l

identify with the church, the social collectivity which (in
sociological terms explained in the first part of this essay)
holds the faith as an ideology. His real act of decision, then, is
not toward the faith but toward the church that claims to pos-
sess it. By identifying with the church he deludes himself into
thinking that he has made a decision of faith. Actually he
has only joined a club and accepted its bylaws. The bad faith
of this operation is reinforced by theologians and apologians
who bid us find out "what was really meant" in the canonical
writings, the church fathers, and whatever other sources the
church regards as authorities. It is assumed that, having found
out "what was really meant/* all that is now required is an
intellectual assent and thereby one has arrived at a state of
faith. This, of course, is a delusion too. One may find out to
one's full satisfaction what the New Testament means and
agree wholeheartedly that the church (or one of the churches)
adequately represents this meaning. This realization, however,
does not get one a single step further toward the affirmation
that this meaning is the truth, let alone the decision to
base one's own life on it. The church is the
this great social fal

us is why there are acute dangers involved for an honest
confrontation with the Christian faith in the so-called '^re^

7> of recent Protestant history. A new
the church has been, rightly or wrongly, one of
the contributions of the theological revival of the last few
decades. This essay is not concerned with going into these
theological issues or even speculating on the implications
of some of our perspectives here for a doctrine of the
church. However^ in a purely^ $^ new

emphasis on the church^ncotngg^ manypeople ""To""
(or, if one prefers, to "alternate*') intQ_tiie_church in lieu
of "leaping*' intojan affirmation of peys Q ?l faith Tt is also
possiBTe, of^OTirseTthat there is a counsel of despair involved
in this movement. The world has appeared as a singularly
uncomfortable and inhospitable place for those who would
seek ways of morally relevant action in it* The retreat into a

l82 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

religious ghetto, nicely fumlslied with all the liturgical trap-
pings (after all, the "rediscovery of the church" has been
logically accompanied by a liturgical revival ), is a more
comfortable course. One may add in passing that such a ghetto
is also more conducive to satisfying one's avowed or un-
avowed "needs" for mystical titillations. Thjejiewcclesiology
can sen^e-'aS'-a-^afe^JiaJi^tion ofjthjs retreat. The churches,
appalled and baffled by the overwhelming social, economic,
and political problems of the postwar world, can then with a
better conscience spend their time with "spiritual" concerns.
Against this boom of * 'religious interests/' not only in our
churches but throughout our society, one cannot repeat often
enough William Temple's incisive comment

that God isprimarily^jnto
BonhoeffeiTloTEe effect that only he

who shouts out for the Jews has the right to sing Gregorian
chants.

If one agrees with the position that the Christian faith
concerns existence in the world, and not a religious existence
lived in withdrawal from the world, thgn.very serious qugs-
tions must be raised about thejxaditional postures of. let us
say,] cer^^ >r _CBns;Bag s - Hendnk Kraemer once commented
on the lamentable fact that Christians could normally be
recognized by the sickbed odor they exuded and spread around
them. One should add quickly that this aroma of otherworldli-
ness is still much more palatable in the case of the honest
pietist or fundamentalist than in the case of back-slapping,
guffaw-swapping, "one of the boys"-style ecclesiastics of a
more recent model. This otherworldHness penetrates religious
activities and gives them their peculiar character of bizarre
unreality, even (and perhaps especially) when the attempt
is made to give them an everyday, matter-of-fact character.
Incidentally, the same aura of otherworldly unpleasure and
unfunniness hangs over church bazaars and get-togethers of
Communist clubs. The seriousness of the agape meal looms
as an opressive shadow over the profane conviviality of the
back-yard barbecue. This otherworldliness will not surprise us if

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND CRITIQUE OF RELIGION 183

we understand the sociopsychological function of religion as
an escape from the world and a mystification of worldly
reality.

Qhristian Jaith ^aiace^^
into those places jg the woric^^

It would seem to follow from such a "secular" understanding
of the Christian^ T jfe^tEa^

"riiiisFn&e totally open toward the_M>jdd~-mid^

The CHrisHaii^faith cannot provide the intel-

lectual appointments with which to furnish a sacred cave, a
religious meaning system within which one can hide from
ambiguity. On the contrary, the Christian faith explodes
these dens of seclusion and sends their former inhabitants
out into the open fields of the world. In this way a real
dialogue between faith and unbelief becomes possible. If this
dialogue is to be carried on in good faith, it means a deliberate
surrender of those religious pretensions which Dostoyevsky's
Grand Inquisitor summed up in his phrase "miracle, mystery
and authority." The Christian is not one possessed by ir-
resistible forces from the beyond. He is a human being and
remains one. It is as a human being that he enters into
conversation with others.

In recent Protestant theology much use has been made of
the term "kerygma/* which is the New Testament term for
the proclamation of the Gospel Such proclamation, presuma-
bly, is made with authority, with the claim to a dignity
going beyond the human nature of the proclaimed The
paradigm of such proclamation for this writer is the customary
little ritual preceding the sermon in Lutheran churches,
The liturgy is over and the preacher has mounted the pulpit.
He raises his hands and the congregation rises. He then
brings greetings to them "from God our Father and our
Lord Jesus Christ." The congregation then sits down and
listens. What is being said, it is assumed, is not just the
labored effort at communication of the Lutheran pastor in
question, but a message coming with the same authority

184 ^HE PEECARIOUS VISION

that pronounced the greetings. Again, this essay cannot go
into a theological discussion of what the New Testament
calls exausia (apostolic authority). But it is possible to ask,

even while accepting the traditional Protestant posture of the
kerygma, whether an acceptance of the "world come of age"

may nr^j^T^J^ wTiafr gap be jelled a ^^nkerYgmatic

pogture thgtjSg , a stance on the gartjpf the Christian which

del^mtel^ fro uithor--

It would seem that only in such a posture is genuine dialogue
possible. One cannot converse honestly unless one puts all
one's cards on the table. A claim to religious authority,
carried into a dialogue however polite, is a club held under
the table. A claim to authority always projects the point
at which coercion will replace communication "Believe or
shut up y "-~or even "'Believe or be damned/' Real dialogue
implies that partners enter into conversation as equals, that
they take each other's position as profoundly serious, and
that, in principle, they are willing to change their own
positions as a result of the dialogue. If, despite this careful
surrender of any human superiority, there remains authority
in what is attempted to communicate in the dialogue, then
this authority is not that of the speaker but of that which
passes through his words. It would seem that the possibility of
such a nonkerygroatic posture is implied in the incarnation.
God, who has all possible and conceivable authority, divests
Himself of all authority in His kenosis. Jesus Christ, the in-
carnate God, refrains at all times from using the powerful in-
struments of "miracle, mystery and authority" to convince
men and inds the temptation of Satan in the suggestion that
these instruments be used. Would it not be strange if the
followers of this Jesus Christ could not risk subjecting their
faith to the openness of human communication, would have to
protect it constantly by the armor plate of religious suzerainty?
God wants the free assent of men. God wants human free-
dom. These, it would seem, are necessary affirmations of

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND CRITIQUE OF RELIGION 185

the Christian understanding of God's dealings with humanity,
and at the same time warrants for the total openness of the
Christian toward the world. In this openness lies the decisive
Christian answer to the antireligious critique. 18

istlan Faith and Bad Faith

THE CHRISTIAN FAITH RADICALLY DEBUNKS THE SOCIAL FICTIONS,
THE CHRISTIAN FATTH IS THUS RELATED TO SOCIAL PERCEPTION.
CHRISTIAN ETHICS IS IRRELEVANT UNLESS IT SEES THROUGH THE
FICITTIOUSKESS OF SOCIAL STRUCTURE.

In the last chapter various statements were made from a
Christian platform, as it were. Anyone who has followed
the argument of this essay so far may well ask how the
writer manages to get up on this platform without having
to apply to himself that category of bad faith which has
previously been used in these pages with some generosity. It
must already be evident from the previous chapter that the
writer would maintain emphatically that Christian faith need
not be, and in its essence is not, bad faith, as that category
has been elucidated above. Any amplification of this position
will, of necessity, take on a somewhat personal character.
Since this essay is in no way the writer's apologia pro vita sua,
this is not an endearing prospect. However, the integrity of
the argument demands a measure of amplification at this
point. The writer, therefore, asks for indulgence if at this
one point in the essay some fairly personal statements are
made.

In the theological milieux of American Protestantism with
which the author is familiar (and which do not include the
grim fortresses of what remains of fundamentalism) there
are patent advantages to sailing under the banners of either
nee-orthodoxy or liberalism. In the first case, one is "in with"
the bright young men (using the adjective "ymmg" in about
the sense that politicians would in referring to candidates for

CHRISTIAN FAITH ANI> BAB FAITH 187

public office); in the latter case, one can find social refuge
with some of the older gentlemen, which often has unex-
pected intellectual charms of its own (such as, for example,
the delicate pleasure of dabbling in heresy). If one has
difficulty locating oneself under either banner, at least by and
large, one may find oneself (to mix metaphors bravely) in
the situation of the man who lands on the floor in a game
of musical chairs. The writer must confess that this is exactly
where he habitually finds himself in the game of theological
encampment. This observation requires some explanation.
Perhaps the easiest way of explaining this would be to say
that the liberals pose a theological problem, the neo-orfhodox
a psychological one. Or in different words, the difficulty with
the liberals lies in what they say, with the neo-orthodox in
how they say it. When it comes to the liberal conception of
Christianity, the writer is compelled to say what the lady
said to the palaeontologist at the cocktail party "This is very
interesting, if you're interested in it" Not finding that his
natural reason predisposes him either toward religious hypoth-
eses or to the "ethics of Jesus," and not convinced at all that a
religious rationale is needed for such goals as world peace or
racial equality, the writer has few interests which would make
possible any sort of identification with liberal Christianity.
Insofar ^^^I^m^^^L^is relevant, its relevance lies in the
very unnatural aiid^iinieasoiiable message with which the
coii^gg^iemselves. However, while the writer's

Mm toward the neo~
a grave psychological problem as
The problem can be described
very simply. Yes, indeed, what is being talked of here is of the
greatest interest but how do these people work up the air
of total conviction with which they do the talking? The
liberals, at any rate, have the courtesy to make clear at fre-
quent intervals that they are talking out of the limitations
of their human location. The neo-orthodox have the discon-
certing haMtjo^
HneTo^^Eeadquarters. The kerygma is thrown down with

l88 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

bravado from a pulpit suspended In midair between heaven
and earth. This writer has great difficulty not only with the
astounding indifference in some of these quarters as to what
happens to the kerygma when it hits the ground, so to speak.
He also is severely perplexed by the feat which allows people
to climb into this lofty position. It may be allowed to point
here once more to Monsignor Racciatfs discussion in Chapter
7 of the less-than-convinciiig rationalizations normally given
for this acrobatic achievement.

As the good monsignor points out, there may well be
people who have had a mystical or even miraculous ex-
perience of metaphysical reality, an experience of such con-
viction that thereafter doubt is possible only as an intellectual
exercise (say, like that of a philosopher playing with solipsism) .
Unfortunately the writer has not been thus privileged. He
suspects strongly that he shares this underprivileged con-
dition with the overwhelming majority of people. His sus-
picion even extends to those, be they monsignors or other
fully accredited experts In religious communication, who claim
such privilege. But even if he is willing to grant to these
their authentic virtuosity in these matters, this does not assist
him or others in his boat to muddle through within their
amateur status. This has a very simple semantic consequence
in terms of the use of words like "faith" and "believe/* If
one is in this underprivileged position and uses language
honestly, then one may be fully aware of and intellectually
agree with the more sophisticated theological uses of these
words (as r for instance, Luther's identification of faith with
trust, confidence fides==fiducui) y but ultimately one will have
to use the words in their quite ordinary, common-usage sense.
That is, when one says "I believe** rather than "I know" one
is expressing a view of which one is not completely certain.
That this view is much more than a mere opinion or
theoretical hypothesis, that it is the result of passionate com-
mitment and may lead to the most far-reaching existential
consequences, is beside the point tiere. If one says **I believe/*
in this sense, one faces the fact that one is essentially in the

CHRISTIAN FAITH AKD BAB FAITH 189

same boat as the unbeliever that is, one has essentially the
same position vis-a-vis the kerygnia that he has. The message
of redemption in Jesus Christ comes to believer and un-
believer alike from the outside, refraining from coercion*
asking an act of faith. Speaking theologically, this means
that the Christian remains a sinner (that is, one separated
from God) also intellectually. Speaking humanly, it means
that what is called for is a decision made on less than over-
powering evidence.

This has the further consequence that one who believes in
this sense cannot escape the question of unbelief (or, for that
matter, his own question) as to why he makes this de-
cision* Not even a radical Calvinist doctrine of election ab-
solves him from this necessity, for it is he who decides to
assent to this doctrine. As we have seen, it is in the rationaliza-
tion of such decisions that one skirts dangerously close to
bad faith. Thus the writer finds himself unable to see Chris-
tian faith as the only alternative to despair. As Bonhoeffer
has pointed out very clearly, this simply is not true. Indeed,
the choice to take refuge in a religious system rather than face
courageously the uncertainty of the human condition can
itself be called an act of despair. Nor can the writer find much
to recommend itself in the masochistic submission to an
alien truth which is characteristic of so much religious think-
ing. If one takes seriously the notion that God is truth, then
such a sacrifichtm intettectus is not only an offense against
one's own integrity but against God,

There can be no basis for Christian faith except in the
encounter with the figure of Jesus Christ, as it becomes mani-
fest in the testimony of the Bible and the living proclama-
tion in the church. Faith is the decision to stake one's
existence on this figure. This is not a negative choice, because
of any number of alternatives, because one cannot face fini-
tude, meaninglessness, guilt, or death. It is a free and positive
choice, not away from the realities of the human condition
but toward this figure in whom the human condition is
transfigured. To be human means to live with inconclusive

THE PRECARIOUS VISION

Inforaiation on the ultimate meaning of things. To have
faith in Christ means to say that, if there is any meaning at
all, it is here that one must find it. Perhaps, in the dialogue
between faith and unbelief, one can go one small step further.
One can add that in making the decision of Christian faith
one chooses to believe that the ultimate truth about man is
foy rather than courage* Another way of putting this is to
say that the comic aspect of man's existence is more significant
than that of tragedy (a point which we shall develop a little
further in the following chapter). Unbelief will point out
that in the world we are surrounded by signals that do not
interpret themselves (a point that has been very much
developed in Sartre's philosophy). There are signals of joy
and signals of sorrow. It is our choice if we give more
weight to the ones rather than to the others. This is true.
But this also means that there is no rational priority to either
choice. Christian faith follows the signposts of foy, considers
them as the tokens of God's presence and as marking the
path of human destiny toward its fulfillment,

The Christian confession that "J esus Christ has risen from
the dead!" is a shout of joy. Perhaps it is not only a Prot-
estant but a generally Western characteristic that the at-
tention of the faith has shifted from the jubilation of Easter
to the sombemess of Good Friday. Yet the Christian message
is not primarily that "Jesus Christ has been crucified/' That,
in itself, would hardly have provided the basis for a proclama-
tion. The proclamation announces the cross, but under the
aspect of its having been overcome in the victory of the
Resurrection. Perhaps Protestants can learn something here
from the Eastern church a thought that obtrudes itself upon
anyone who has ever witnessed a Greek or Russian Easter
service. The innermost secret of the Christian faith is not
darkness but blazing light, not conviction of sin but an
exultation that embraces not only all men but the whole
infinite expanse of being. In the words of a Russian Easter
hymn:

CHBISTIAN FAITH AND BAB FAITH

"For meet is it that the heavens should rejoice, and that the earth
should be glad, and that the whole world, both visible and in-
visible, should keep the Feast. For Christ is risen, the everlasting
joy!'*

If these remarks delineate the position of Christian faith,
as the writer would understand it, as against the possibilities
of bad faith of a religious nature, it may now be in order
to relate this Christian faith to the varieties of bad faith that
involve the social perception and self-perception of men.
These considerations may also serve to introduce the ethical
significance of Christian faith in dealing with these social
problems.

We would venture to say that the perspective on society
developed in the first part of this essay, while it does not
lead directly to a Christian ethic of society, supplies im-
portant prolegomena to such an ethic. There is a wealth of
theological writing in the field of "social ethics/* some of it
dealing in a profound and challenging way with the moral
problems faced by men in their social relationships. How-
ever, there is one thread that runs through many of these
which is most likely to lead to a distorted view of social
reality, and that is the understanding of social roles and
institutions as given in very much the same way as natural
phenomena are given. Thus ethicists will speak of "the
family/* "the state," or "the economy" as if these were
hewn out of granite, while actually, as we have tried to
indicate, they are manufactured out of the most precarious
of fictions, assumptions, and "as if agreements. This is most
true, of course, when social institutions are conceived of as
actually given in natural law, as in Catholic social doctrine,
but also when they (or their ideal prototypes) are thought of
as "orders of creation/* as in Emil Brunne/s ethics. 2 There
follows the almost irresistible tendency to speculate ethically
not about men but about social roles. One then looks not at
the moral problems of human beings engaged in government
or warfare or agriculture, but one theorizes about the ethics

102 THE PRECAM0US VISION

of "the statesman/' "the soldier/' or "the peasant." There is
then only one step to the bad faith which provides moral
alibis in the name of mythological entities such as "the
state/' "the law/" "the system of free enterprise/' and so forth.
Of course the ethicist like the sociologist, or, for that matter,
the man in the street will speak of institutions in these
abstract terms, and furthermore such abstraction is a necessity
of analytic thinking. The danger, as we have tried to show,
begins when these abstractions are taken to exist as moral
realities which supersede the moral imperatives of real human
beings. We would suggest that the perspective on society
developed in the first part of this essay may be helpful in
avoiding this danger,

The confrontation with the living God of the Christian
faith strips men of their alibis and disguises. The aprons of
ig leaves spun with the lies of institutional ideologies can-
not cover man's nakedness as God seeks him out in his hiding
places. In this, indeed, all men are the children of Adam,
who said, "I heard the sound of thee in the garden, and I was
afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself* (Gen. 3:10).
Or, in the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews: "And before
him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to
the eyes of him with whom we have to do" (Heb. 4:13) . The
God "with whom we have to do" has not recognized the
sovereignty of our card-house institutions or the extrater-
ritoriality of the moral hiding places which men have con-
cocted among themselves. He steps into the palace of the
king and the judge's chambers, ignoring the royal mantle
and the judicial robes, and addresses the naked man under-
neath the costume as He addressed Adam; "But the Lord
God called to the man, and said to him, 'Where are you?' n
(Gen. 3:9). And as kings and fudges renounce their human
brotherhood with their victims, pointing to the immunity of
their office., God will address them in words no different from
those addressed to Cain: "What have you done? The voice of
your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground"
(Gen. 4:10).

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND BAB FAITH 193

Every literate man knows that certain positions in society
entail responsibilities, privileges., and immunities. There are
many books written about this, such as textbooks of ethics,
codes of law, constitutions, and statutes. We would suggest
that God, regrettably, has not read any of them. We would
further suggest that this proposition of the illiteracy of God
follows of necessity from the realization of God's truth as
against the bad faith of social subterfuge.

To illustrate this proposition we might turn briefly once
more to the case of capital punishment. We have looked be-
fore in some detail at the fabric of social fictions which pro-
vides moral alibis for all the individuals participating in this
killing and which actually pretends that no individual did any
killing at all. In a well-ordered modern state there are ample
possibilities of documentation for this claim to personal im-
munity. The fudge can point to the statute books, the governor
to the constitution of the state, the warden to the prison
regulations, and so forth. Any literate man can easily verify
the authenticity of the claims. It is most unfortunate that
God is illiterate. He has read neither statute books nor the
constitution of the state, nor the prison regulations. Also,
judges, governors, and wardens can point out to anyone that
they have been duly appointed or elected to their respective
offices; they have impressive documents to show that will
verify this to any man who would question their jurisdiction
or proper authority in the matter. It is again most regrettable
that God is illiterate. The appointment of Judge Smith has
been registered in all appropriate offices, published in the daily
press, and entered in various official handbooks. God, alas,
was not informed about the appointment. He continues to
look upon Smith as a human being and judges him as human
beings are judged in the divine presence. Since God is not
only truth but also mercy, it is not beyond imagining that
Smiths delusions about his own status may be a mitigating
circumstance in the judgment. But God would not be God
if He recognized these delusions as the truth.

This denuding character of the encounter between God and

PHECABIOUS VISION

man is understandable in terms of the Christian doctrine of
creation, God created the heavens and the earth. And then
He created man. He did not create society. That latter
achievement belongs entirely to man's own ingenuity. But
God looks upon man and continues to address man as His
creature. In other words ? God addresses man as man and as
nothing else. Even a human father will often find it hard to
resist a smile when his son, whom he watched as a yelping
infant on the day of his birth, steps up to him as a vice-
president of the corporation or aide-de camp to the command-
ing general. But human fathers, themselves part of the social
drama r may eventually "be taken in. God is above the social
drama and is never taken in. Man enters into the world naked,
without a name, without social roles* without involvement
in the great institutions. For the remainder of his life he
impresses upon others and upon himself the importance of
his name, social roles and institutional positions. God re-
mains unimpressed. In the words of Job: '"Naked I came
from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return" (Job
1:21). It would seem that no Christian understanding of
society can dispense with this awareness of man's persisting
nakedness beneath his social masquerades,

Perhaps the most temyi0g aspect of the confrontation with
God's address is not the judgment over man's sin but the
profound challenge to his most cherished identifications.
One dreams that one finds oneself on the street naked. One
wakes up, shakes off the nightmare and the embarrassment,
and repeats to oneself with pleasure one's repertoire of
title roles: "I am Mr, James Sutherland Smith" "I am the
husband of Mrs. Alice Jenaison Smith 3 * "I am vice-president
of the Epitomy Manufactoring Corporation" "I am a reg-
istered Republican/* and so forth. Into this reassuring recital
comes God*s address and returns one in an instant to
nakedness. ""And the foundations of the thresholds shoolc
at the voice of him who called" (Is. 6:4), Not least the
narrow thresholds which hold in our self-conceptions and
our self-esteem!

CHBISTIAN FAITH AND BAB FAITH 195

But God's challenge is not only to the consciously contrived
identifications of social one-upmanship. The challenge ex-
tends to the deepest, most taken-for-granted conceptions as
to who and what one is. In the American racial situation it
is easily said by Northern preachers of racial equality that
God is "color-blind/' This, of course, is quite true 7 in quite
the sense intended by those who say it. But to grasp the
weight of what is said one must realize the depths of self*
identification involved in a Southerner saying to himself
and to others, "I am white/* Lillian Smith has given us a
haunting description of this process of self -identification under
the telling title "The White Man's Burden is his Own
Childhood":

"So we learned the dance that cripples the human spirit, step
by step by step, we who were white and we who were colored,
day by day, hour by hour, year by year until the movements were
reflexes and made for the rest of our life without thinking. Alas,
for many white children, they were movements made for the
rest of their lives without feeling. What white southerner of my
generation ever stops to think consciously where to go or asks
himself if it is right for him to go there! His muscles know where
he can go and take him to the front of the streetcar, to the front
of the bus, to the big school, to the hospital, to the library, to hotel
and restaurant and picture show, into the best that his town has
to offer its citizens. These ceremonials in honor of white supremacy,
performed from babyhood, slip from the conscious mind down
deep into muscles and glands and on into that region where
mature ideals rarely find entrance, and become as difficult to tear
out as are a child's beliefs about God and his secret dreams about
himself."*

The proclamation that God is "no respecter of persons," that
He does not know the difference between "white" and "black/*
that the racial system of the South is a moral evil this
proclamation is not just a statement of inconvenient ethical
injunctions but a shattering blow to the very roots of self-
esteem. The Southerner whom Lillian Smith describes in
the above passage may lose all he has, worldly goods and
social position, perhaps even Ms sanity, but in the deepest

196 THE PBECAMOUS VISION

recesses of his self there will be something that will say, "I am
white/* Go<Ts reply to this final self-affirmation is quite
simple: "No you are not whiteyou we a human being"
In this confrontation the bad faith of the racial posture is
sharply revealed. For "to be white," as any student of Southern
society knows, is not a biologically objective fact of the
pigmentation of the skin but rather a socially concocted myth.
In a biological sense a man "is" this or that color. That,
presumably, is a fact of nature. But in the socially relevant
sense a man "is white" by the fiat of the myth. Enough has
been written about the racial fantasies involved in this myth
(as illustrated best by the case of very light-skinned "Ne-
groes") to dispense with further elaboration. The crucial
point is that "to be white" is not a biological fact but a social
fiction. The system of oppression that appeals to this fiction
is a system of bad faith. Both fiction and bad faith will not
hold up in the confrontation with the God of truth. It goes
without saying that the same argument applies to other
racial, national, or ethnic identifications. Here too we have
to deal with the illiterate God. Everyone knows very well
that we have no choice in certain situations but to act "as
white Southerners," "as Americans," "as Europeans," "as
Jews," and so on. After all, this is what the social libretto
says here is our name and next to it it says in clear writ-
ing "a Jew," "a German," or whatever the play has cast us
as. Again it is a great pity that this libretto has not come to
God's attention. He thus remains inconsiderately uninter-
ested in our description in the dramatis personae. Indeed, it
is in the etymologically literal sense of the word (persona=z
dramatic mask) that God is "no respecter of persons/'

It is in this society-shattering sense that we may understand
Paul's declaration that in Christ "There is neither Jew nor
Greek, there is neither slave nor free" (Gal 3:28). And we
are certainly justified if we regard this declaration as being of
significance beyond the confines of the Christian community
itself. The church, the community that confesses Christ, is
to be in the world as a promise of the new human order that

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND BAB FAITH 197

lies in the eschatological future. Christ is Lord over the
world as well as over the church. The nonrecognition of
ethnic and social identifications within the church foreshadows
their nonrecognition in the world under the Lordship of the
triumphant Christ. It gives one deep pause to read on in
this same statement of Paul's and find it continues with the
assertion that in Christ "there is neither male nor female."
We would venture to suggest (at the risk of engaging in
very daring exegesis) that there is much more involved
in this final assertion than a call for equality between the
sexes. We would suggest that, as God challenges all our
social identifications, He also challenges our sexual identifica-
tion. God refuses to recognize our protestations and moral
deductions to the effect that "we are Jews," "we are Greeks,"
"we are whites," "we are American citizens." He challenges
no less our self-identifications as men and as women, our
pretensions of virility and femininity. The divine answer to
the statement "I am a man" is, once more, "No you are
not a man you are a human being"

We would argue here somewhat analogously to the way in
which we approached the relationship of fact and fiction in the
racial situation. There are, of course, objective biological
facts involved in human sexuality. Yet even a cursory glance
at the wealth of anthropological literature on sexuality in
different cultures will immediately show us that the complex
of values, emotions, and moral ideals implied in the state-
ment "I am a man" is not biologically given but socially
learned. In other words, there are sexual roles just as there
are other roles in society. Once more, the total identifica-
tion of oneself with the sexual role is an act of bad faith.
Any amount of delving into psychiatric literature about hu-
man sexuality will show us, even among the least "malad-
justed," the tremendous precariousness of sexual identification.
It would, for example, be of great interest to have Rorschach
data available on the judges, jurors, and prosecuting attorneys
who in Anglo-Saxon countries continue to this day to throw
homosexuals in jail for years, and this frequently for acts

198 THE PHECARIOUS VISION

engaged in discreetly and voluntarily by adults. The persecu-
tion of homosexuals is so vicious for very much the same
reasons that racial persecution is. While the persecutor in
the latter case uses his victim in bad faith to bolster his
spurious self-identification as a member of a superior iace, the
persecutor in the former case forces upon and hence out of
his victim the confirmation of his own usually shaky self-
identification as a "nounal" male. One beats the Negro to feel
white. One spits upon the homosexual to feel virile.

It i$ not our concern here to enlarge upon the question of
a Christian ethic of sexuality, of the moral problems of
homosexuality^ or of the question as to the propei use of
the police powers of the state in areas of private moials. We
would only suggest that a truthful approach to these areas
that i$ ? the only approach allowable in the confrontation of
otir existence with God will make us wary of speaking very
glibly about what is "natural/' ''normal/' or "given" in the
sexual roles of men and women. It is remarkable how Chris-
tian thought in these areas succeeds in going ahead happily
as if the wealth of anthropological research on these matters
in the last century, at least, had never happened. We might
quote as an example not one of the worst cases but one of
the best the report on hotnosesniality of a committee set
up a few years ago by the Church of England (a report, let
it be added hastily, which is remarkable for its sensible and
enlightened approach to this question) ;

"Right reason thus points to the ineluctable conclusion that the
use of the ses&tal organs, being governed by the nature of sex it-
self and fry the recogafeed purposes of coitus, is proper only in
the context of a personal relation which is both heterosexual and
specifically marital Considered, then,, in teims of objective morality,
it is evident that homosexual acts are contrary to the will of God
for htraian sexuality, and are therefore sinful per se^

We would suggest, as a helpful exercise, an examination in
the light of the perspective on society developed in the first
part of this essay of the phrases "recognized purposes/*

CHRISTIAN FAITH AKD BAB FAITH

"specifically marital," and "objective morality "! The Ameri-
can reader, who has strong nerves and the will to carry
problems to their "ineluctable conclusion" might amplify
the exercise by reading, in succession, a good anthropological
treatise on human sexuality, 5 the first Kinsey report, and
some of the laws on sexual offenses now on the statute books
of American states. 6

A simple definition of a humanist ethic might be one
which orients its conceptions and imperatives toward men
rather than institutions. Thus, a humanist ethic, such as
is generally accepted in Western democracies, would hold
that political institutions exist for the welfare of men. Recent
history has given us ample opportunity to observe the con-
sequences of a contrary ethic that maintains that men exist for
the welfare of the state. It is one of the ironies of history
(and one of the consequences of the Babylonian captivity of
the Christian faith in religious forms) that Christian ethical
thought has frequently found itself in the antihumaiiist camp.
We would suggest, from our understanding of society and of
the Christian faith, that a Christian ethic will always be
humanist in the sense just given. God is concerned with
men. He addresses men. He addresses institutions only in
the sense that men, in their real life in society, exist in
institutional involvements. Thus different words must be ad-
dressed to the king and to the peasant. But both are ad-
dressed as men.

But Christian faith is relevant for social perception not only
in such extreme cases as capital punishment or racial oppres-
sion (although the debunking, unmasking character of the
Christian faith becomes very clear in the way it challenges
the pretensions involved in such human situations) . We would
once more point to Bonhoeffer's assertion that Christ is Lord
not only over the so-called "boundary situations" of human
existence, but also Lord over the central areas of life (the
"middle of the village," as Bonhoeffer called it). For, as we
have seen, men come up against the problem of bad faith not
only when they are jurors in sodomy cases or participants

2OO THE PRECARIOUS VISION

in other forms of legal lynching. Bad faith looms as a constant
possibility over everyday life and its most ordinary pursuits.
We might return here once more to the case of occupational
or professional ideologies.

A good illustration of this might be the self-image of the
advertising man in America, as it appears in his professional
publications and gatherings, as well as in his speaking about
himself personally. 7 This self-image presents the adman as a
rather gay, reckless figure, in some ways a professional fun-
maker, descended in apostolic succession from the storytellers
and town criers of olden times. He practices an art by which
he gives color and amusement to people who might otherwise
live very drab lives. Like all artists he has a measure of poetic
license with the truth and mainly plays on the emotions
rather than the intellect. In our own society this fun-maker
also carries on a worthwhile, even crucial economic mission,
His activities help move the goods, on which movement de-
pends our prosperity. Advertising and abundance go together.
The advertiser serves the public by showing it the way to a
new, abundant life. Also, he serves as a bridge of communica-
tion between manufacturer and consumer. The adman repre-
sents the exuberance, the enterprise, and the confidence of our
society.

It will be apparent to most non-admen that this self-image
has a very shaky relationship with reality. The economic
assumptions of the ideology are, at any rate, not beyond all
reasonable doubt (that is, the notions about the economic
beneficence of advertising) * But its noneconomic aspects are
shaky enough too. One may point out the discrepancy between
the image of the fun-maker and the image of the communi-
cations expert. What is more, the apostolic succession of the
first image is spurious. We are dealing here with the most
synthetic of fun-makingbased on careful market research,
with a steady eye on the sales statistics and another eye peek-
ing over the shoulder of the psychoanalyst for technical hints,
the whole operation calculated for profit from beginning to
end. Beyond that, the gay and reckless figure of the adman is

CHRISTIAN FAITH AKD BAD FAITH 2OI

not much in evidence when one has once looked a little more
deeply into the world of Madison Avenue. This is a world of
much anxiety and frustration, taking its grim toll of nerves,
dreams, and ulcers. Finally, the license which the adman takes
with the truth and with men's emotions is rarely poetic. It is
the art of the sharp salesman, not that of the poet, which is
in demand here.

Why is such an image adopted? This is not a very difficult
question to answer. Men never like to face unpleasant aspects
of their life. They invent ideologies to pretty up the picture.
Groups of men reinforce each other in the conviction that the
ideology is the truth. Advertising, as an occupation, presents
a very high degree of conflict and tension. It demands a
nervous, sharply competitive life. It involves the constant
necessity of manipulating oneself and other people. If viewed
under an ethical aspect it presents even greater doubts and
anxieties. It is normal for men to shy away from anxiety and
guilt. Occupational ideologies provide a convenient method
for doing this.

Perhaps the problem of guilt is where the Christian faith
relates most directly to this type of ideology. To ask men to
see through their own ideological befogment is to push them
into facing the moral ambiguity of their situation. The psy-
chological tendency is, of course, to resist this attempt. Men
tend psychologically either to suppress their guilt or to analyze
it away. If the Christian faith involved only the proclamation
of God's judgment,, it would only reinforce this tendency (as,
indeed, it has where it was mainly understood in this way-
compare the Freudian paradise of the "Puritan mind"l). But
the Christian faith primarily proclaims God's grace. The vic-
tory of Christ over sin and death involves the possibility that
men may face their own guilt in a new way, Christian faith
holds that man is justified by grace in the real world, as a real
human being that is, as a sinner. This belief makes it possible
for man to face himself and to dispense with the narcotic of
ideology. This can be a very liberating experience, not only
emotionally but in the way in which it may now become

2O2 THE PRECARIOUS VISION*

possible to seek avenues of responsible action in one's situa-
tion. With this new freedom there is at least a chance of modi-
fying some of the morally questionable features of the situa-
tion. As long as the situation is shrouded in ideology, there is
not even a chance. Thus Christian faith is relevant not only to
social consciousness but also to the (sometimes slim) possi-
bility of social action. It is important to stress, however, that
liberation begins in the realm of consciousness. Truly liber-
ating action in society is dependent on this first liberation.

A few years ago a group of American military chaplains met
in western Germany with a group of German churchmen to
discuss problems of the military chaplaincy. This was the
period when the new west-German army was just being or-
ganized and the problems were very timely. One of the
American chaplains delivered a lecture describing and praising
the chaplaincy in the American armed forces. He spent much
time on the so-called "character guidance program/ 7 empha-
sized the close relationships among religion, morals, and
patriotism, and finally stressed the direct contribution of the
chaplain's work to military morale. The Germans were some-
what taken aback by this interpretation, which for them had
rather disturbing similarities with views associated with a
relatively recent past of German history. But there was little
discussion immediately after the lecture. Some time later a
group of the participants in this meeting were sitting together.
Suddenly one of the German churchmen leaned over to the
American who had given the lecture and asked him: "How
does the function of the chaplain in the American army differ
from that of the politruk in the Soviet army?" The import of
the question did not immediately register with the American,
because the question had to be translated and there had to be
an explanation of the Russian term (politruks are Communist
political officers attached to all units of the Soviet army, their
task being the political guidance and morale of the troops).
When the meaning of the question became clear to the Ameri-
can and his colleagues there was a long, painful silence. Then
the Americans began to ask questions not belligerently but in

CHRISTIAN FAITH ANB BAD FAITH 203

a mood of embarrassment and urgent curiosity. It was quite
clear that the one question asked by the German churchman
had suddenly opened up a completely new perspective on
their situation to these chaplains. It would., of course., have
been easy for them to defend themselves against the question
within the categories of their professional ideology. That they
did not do this, that they really listened to the question and
tried to meet it, was not in small measure due to the Christian
context in which both questioner and questioned faced each
other. It is in this kind of encounter that the Christian faith
can become liberating in the social perception and conscious-
ness of men.

There is something radically "subversive" about this libera-
tion. And, one might add, the Roman authorities showed
great wisdom and political acumen in feeding the Christians
to the lions (by the time the practice ended, of course, the
Christians had become sufficiently domesticated to be innoc-
uous to society). However, it would be erroneous to view the
"subversion" of the Christian faith in the way in which, for
instance, a Marxist would understand the development of
revolutionary consciousness. Christian faith is radical because
it challenges social assumptions at their very roots. Christian
faith, as we have seen, can never exercise the conservative
function normally assigned to religion* On the other hand,
Christian faith takes a far too realistic view of man to be
revolutionary in too many situations, Christian faith rejects
the ideology of the conservative, because it sees through the
fictitiousness by which the status quo rationalizes and main-
tains itself. Christian faith rejects the utopianism of the
revolutionary, because it will not accept the fantastic hopes for
the future with which revolutionary activity justifies its own
existence. It is bad faith to oppress men in the name of con-
servative principles. It is also bad faith to engage in atrocities
on the promise of a future justice, a promise for the fulfillment
of which there is little rational hope, Thus the Christian view
of social reality cannot easily be enlisted in the service of
"liberalism" or "conservatism." In some concrete, real situa-

204 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

tions the political decisions of the Christian may be "con-
servative/* in other situations "liberal." The Christian per-
spective will militate against delusions concerning the fu-
ture as well as against those concerning the present. To pursue
this further at this point would take us far beyond our im-
mediate concerns, however, and it may be more profitable to
return once more to the main thread of our argument.

It should be clear by this point that the challenge of the
Christian faith to carefully cherished self-identifications is
frequently a very shocking, disagreeable business. The natural
inclinations of man lead him to take society for granted, to
identify himself fully with the social roles assigned to him,
and to develop ideologies which will organize and dispose of
any doubts that might possibly arise. There is an instructive
affinity between Christian faith and the analytic enterprise of
the social sciences in that both serve to disturb this happy
state of affairs. The Christian faith, in its prophetic mission,
confronts man with a truth of such force that the precarious
pretensions of his social existence disintegrate before it. The
debunking effect of social-scientific analysis is far from con-
tradictory to this prophetic mission. Indeed, it might be called
its profane auxiliary. The smashing of idols, with whatever
hammers, is the underside of prophecy.

But there is another aspect, perhaps one that might be
called more positive, in the affinity between Christian and
sociological "subversion." This aspect we have already touched
upon in our discussion of role theory. It has to do with the
extreme precariousness of human identity, not just of certain
specific social identifications but of identity in any sense of
the word. If we follow the insights of modern social psy-
chology into the character of identity, we get a picture that
makes it very difficult indeed to speak of **human nature" in
any very meaningful sense. Human identity appears as a result
of a socialization process in which it is others that "name"
one "name" in the fullest sense of the word. It is others, by
their recognition, who bestow upon the child his sexual iden-
tity, his identities of race, nationality, and class, and the total

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND BAB FAITH 205

Complex of beliefs, categories, and values that goes with these
several identities. "Human nature" (as soon as we get beyond
strictly zoological facts) is a social product, one that is socially
relative depending upon the accidents of birth and biography.
But identity is not only produced socially. It is also sustained
socially. Self-esteem, self-respect, and even the profounder
levels of self-image depend upon the continuing recognition of
their validity by other human beings. If this recognition is
drastically withdrawn, it normally takes little time before the
whole precarious edifice collapses into a whining misery of
infantile terror. We are what we are by the recognition of
others. Since all such recognition is, by its innate nature,
highly precarious, so is whatever it is that we are. There is
no more distressing realization of the contingency of our
being than to understand that we are dependent for our
very identity upon other human beings creatures, that is,
who may forget or change their minds, and creatures who
will surely die.

This is not the place to speculate philosophically as to
whether it would not be quite possible to get along without a
metaphysical concept of the self. Nor is the writer qualified
for such a philosophical task. It might be said, however, that
a social-scientific slant on the question would certainly not
induce one to tend toward the notion of the self as some kind
of solid, stable entity persisting in time. If one looks at the
bewildering repertoire of roles and "social selves'* (William
James) that any individual has, and then asks, "But who is
he really?" there is no empirically satisfactory way of answering
the question. The social psychologist (or, for that matter, the
sociologist) will probably have to rale out the question and
satisfy himself with the description of the repertoire as it
develops in the individual's different social relationships. A
psychologist might give an answer to the question in terms of
something that could be called the individual's "nature/* but
unfortunately the likelihood is that, in doing so, the individual
becomes either a zoological or a mythical entity which he him-
self has great difficulty recognizing once he is out of the social

2O6 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

situation in which the psychologist makes the interpretation,
An existentialist might possibly answer, "Ask him!" and add
that an individual is that which he chooses himself to be.
Which, if understood within a social frame of reference, is
perhaps the best answer that could be given, unless one
operates with a concept of "soul" that has no relationship to
the empirical self. But, as Sartre has pointed out, this means
that there is no such thing as "human nature." Or rather,
there is not unless one posits God. It would seem that this
Sartrian insight is significant for our argument here.

The reason why it is so difficult to answer the question
"Who is he really?" is that there are no convincing criteria for
deciding which recognition is definitive. After all, the indi-
vidual in question is recognized by some as a virtuous man
and by others as a crook, by some as sincere and by others as
cynical, by some as endowed with a sense of humor and by
others as a deadly bore. Even if there is a measure of con-
sensus about him among his associates (as there usually, is
or society could not go on), this is also an accident of the
individual's situation. Remove him from the group that
thought him virtuous and put him in some other context and
very soon he may act the role of snarling villain. What is
more, his own recognitions of himself are vague and con-
tradictory. His picture of himself varies with the situations in
which he finds himself. And if one psychologist calls him
type A and another type B, there is no way of deciding which
one is to be our authority.

Scholastic theology defined God as the only noncontingent
being. And an Arabic proverb defines man as the one who
forgets. God is the one who remembers. God calls man out of
nothingness and gives him a name and remembers him for
ever. Beyond the contingencies and precariousness of his iden-
tity, man is he -whom God addresses. His being (his "nature,"
if one prefers) lies in that fact of God's address. His identity
is that as which God addresses him. This is what Luther
meant in his saying that man exists as long as God speaks to
him, be it speaking in anger or in mercy. Or to put this in the

CHRISTIAN FAITH AHD BAD FAITH 2Oy

terms used above, God's recognition is the definitive one.
Only in this perspective can we answer the question as to who
we are. Let it be added here most emphatically that we are not
presenting this at all as an argument for the existence of God,
Such argumentation would once more be producing a deus
ex machina in just the sense criticized by Bonhoeffer. What
we are saying again, however, is that there is here too a certain
affinity between the contingency of man's being, as under-
stood by the Christian faith, and the precariousness of man's
identity, as understood by the social-scientific enterprise. t ^^

There are important consequences to this perspective ii*
terms of the social mission of the Christian church, that com-
munity in which the risen Lord is witnessed to in the world.
Quite apart from what the church may or may not do in the
way of social action, the church, if it is faithful to its mission,
can play a vital role in society and its clash of ideologies. The
church is the place of truth. When we say this, of course, we
are fully aware that this is pretty much the opposite of what
the empirical church normally is (vide Chapter 6 of this
essay). But the church can be the place of truth when it
stands on the ground of Jesus Christ and no other that is,
when it liberates itself from its social and psychological func-
tionality. The church can then be not only the proclaiming
church but the listening church, providing those rare oppor-
tunities in society where men can look truthfully at themselves
and their roles. This too is an essential feature of the non~
kerygmatic posture we discussed before. We would suggest that
one of the most urgent tasks of the church in our present
situation is the providing of such places of truth (be it in the
local congregation or in other locales), places where men can
think through in freedom the moral and human dilemmas of
their social roles. The work of the European laymen's insti-
tutes since World War II has been a serious effort to realize
this shape of the Ecchsia audiens* The demands of the
American situation are not essentially different. 9 /

Even within the church there is often the idea that theolog-
ical thought and understanding of society are strictly segre-

208 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

gated activities of the Christian mind. Both theologians
and sociologists spend much time erecting methodological
fences which keep out the uninitiated (and, incidentally, im-
prison the initiates). We would suggest that the intellectual
tasks of gaining an understanding of the Christian faith in
depth and of gaining a broad perspective on society are related.
We may conclude this chapter with the motto of the Zoe
Brotherhood, a movement for the laity in the Church of
Greece "Conquest in the Wideness through Victory in the
Depth/' 10 And we may add to this a brief passage from a
prayer of Eusebius Matthopoulos, the founder of Zo#:

"We pray Thee to give us a living faith, a sure hope and
an active love.

We pray Thee, O Lord our God, to keep us ever free from
the spirit of self-deceit and pride and from the spirit of
fanaticism.
We pray Thee to give us a correct knowledge of ourself." 11

11. Christian Faith and the Social Comedy

THE CHRISTIAN FAITH, BECAUSE IT VIEWS THE WORLD TINDER THE
ASPECT OF REDEMPTION, REVEALS SOCIETY UNDER THE ASPECT
OF COMEDY. THE CHRISTIAN FAITH RELATES TO MEN STRIPPED OF
THEIR SOCIAL ROLES. CHRISTIAN ETHICS HUMANIZES THE SOCIAL
COMEDY AND FREES MEN FROM THE BONDAGE OF DEADLY EARNEST-
NESS.

In the course of this essay the term "comic perspective" has
crept up before. Indeed^ it was pointed out that the perception
developed in the first part of the essay was essentially one of
society as a comedy notwithstanding the all too apparent
intrusions of tragedy into the comic action. It may now be
possible to draw some of the implications of this comic char-
acter of society in terms of the Christian faith.

The essence of the comic is discrepancy. This is well ex-
pressed in what are probably the most famous theories con-
cerning the comic among recent thinkers, that is the theories
of Freud 1 and Bergson. 2 In Freud's theory the discrepancy
is between the exorbitant demands of the superego as against
the world of the libido underlying it. Freud places strong em-
phasis on what he himself calls the "unmasking" character of
wit. In Bergson's theory the discrepancy is between the living
organism and the mechanical world. One is moved to laughter
when something living acts like a machine. This laughter
reveals the distinctive, unique quality of life as against all other
phenomena in the world. This essay is not the place to discuss
fully these theories or other interpretations of the comic, 3 It
seems to this writer that Freud's theory, indeed, tells us much
about the psychology of laughter but little about the phenom-
enon of the comic itself. Bergson's theory, on the other

21O THE PKECAMQUS VISION

hand, does penetrate into the phenomenon itself, but its iden-
tification of the comic discrepancy with that between the
biological and the mechanical would seem to be too broad. It
hardly seems possible for a plant to be comic. As to animals,
they appear as comic in the degree to which it is possible to
look at them in anthropomorphic terms. In other words, this
writer would suggest that the comic is a specifically and ex-
clusively human phenomenon. He would suggest further that
the essence of the comic discrepancy is not that between life
and matter but between spirit and world, as that latter dis-
crepancy is revealed in the human condition. Man exists as a
conscious being in an unconscious and apparently uncon-
scionable world* It is in this basically human discrepancy
that the clue to the comic is to be sought.

However, whether this interpretation may seem fanciful or
not, or whatever one's conception of the comic may be, there
can be little doubt about the sharp light which the comic
perspective throws on crucial aspects of the human condition.
We might quote Bergson at this point:

"A situation is invariably comic when it belongs simultaneously
to two altogether independent series of events and is capable
of being interpreted in two entirely different meanings at the
same time/' 4

Bergson is speaking here of the comic in general, but the
words he uses to describe the comic situation are deeply ap-
propriate not only to the phenomenon we have called ^alter-
nation** but to the human condition in general. The aspect of
spirit and the aspect of world, as interpretations of human
situations, always constitute "independent series of events/'
When the worldly aspect is suddenly perceived as coexisting
with the spiritual one, there takes place the "unmasking*' of
which Freud speaks. Thus we find out that the philosopher
has haemorrhoids. Or we laugh because he turns out to be
an anxious miser or an inveterate seducer. The comic source
here is this discrepancy between spirit and all that which is not.
No doubt this is why sexuality has been a source of comedy

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND THE SOCIAL COMEDY 211

from immemorial times. It reveals most sharply the dis-
crepancy between spiritual aspiration and bodily bondage, as
Montaigne has commented upon. Sexuality then "unmasks' 7
the pretensions of the spirit, as Freud has illustrated comically
enough in his theory of everyday slips of the tongue, mistakes,
and misnomers. And the comic in death, also an age-old
theme, has the same source. Death, like sex, is the ultimate
debunking of spirit by body. The pretensions of intelligence
and will are "unmasked" in the facts proclaimed by a body
oblivious of spirit. In the same way, the social drama takes
on the character of a comic farce when looked at under the
aspects of sex and death. Men engage in grandiose undertak-
ings on the stage of society, involving the most complicated
acts of deception, manipulation, and violence, But during all
this time their libido keeps churning away within them,
wanting one thing and one thing only, a thing ridiculously
irrelevant to the empire-building being undertaken by the man
to whom this libido belongs. And eventually everybody in-
volved in the plot dies. Under the aspects of sex and death
it is difficult to take social ambitions very seriously.

The declaration that the social drama is a comedy may well
raise eyebrows and elicit the comment that one can only say
this by being inhumanly blind to the tragic aspects of social
existence. We would not accept this objection. The tragic
and the comic perspectives are not mutually incompatible.
The same human condition which provides materials for
tragedy also and at the same time produces the staff of which
comedy is made. And to see the comic even in the midst of
events that powerfuEy rouse our "tragic sense of life** (Una-
muno) does not at all imply some sort of callousness toward
human suffering. One may recall here a remark made some-
where by David Rousset, a Frenchman who has written about
Nazi concentration camps as a former inmate. Rousset re-
marked that one of the new insights of his imprisonment was
the realization that the comic is an objective element of reality,
persisting and capable of being recognized no matter how
wretched one may be subjectively. In other words, the comic

212 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

has a status in reality beyond the observer's psychology. It
is not just an element of certain types of human conscious-
ness, but an essential ingredient of the human condition as
such. Thus the Nazis were, indeed, the monsters of a night-
marish horror show, but at the same time they were inexorably
ridiculous, appearing as figures of a surrealistic farce (Rousset
uses the term "ubuesque" to describe this aspect, after Alfred
Jarry's surrealistic play King Ubu) . One might add that the art
of Charlie Chaplin (and not only in The Great Dictator] is
based on the same principle as, indeed, is any comedy
with a deep compassion for the vicissitudes of human exist-
ence.

Both tragedy and comedy place the social drama into the
perspective of human finitude. Both a tragic and a comic
mood allow us to perceive the failure of pretensions, ambi-
tions, and aspirations before the hard facts of man's finite
situation. The tragic hero finds his will and his virtue dashing
against the walls of fate. The world, perhaps even his own
body as a part of this world, defeats him. The comic hero
enacts before us the same destiny, but in a different key, as it
were. Both tragedy and comedy proclaim to us that pride is
foolish, remind us of our humanity and hence of our impris-
onment. But in tragedy what is put in question is man. In
comedy not only is man questioned and not taken at face
value, but there is also a question about the imprisonment.
One can put this differently as well. Tragedy accepts the walls
of the prison and perceives the human situation in terms of
this acceptance. Comedy gives the impression that the walls
too are not as grim as they look. Tragedy is perception of the
human situation only under the aspect of immanence. Com-
edy is a signal, an intimation, of transcendence. It is here that
its Christian significance is to be found.

The transcending direction of comedy is probably best ex-
pressed in the art of the clown. The clown is the living
defiance of the laws of nature and the laws of man. He defies
gravity and the resistance of matter. He waves his wand and
the walls of our prison collapse. He walks into the presence of

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND THE SOCIAL COMEDY 213

kings and lauglis in their face. Not only are the social limi-
tations of our existence thus denied, but finitude as such,
finitude as the mode of human existence in the world, is
transcended in the magic of the comic moment. We laugh and
for one moment the walls are really gone. The comic catharsis
is thus a very different one from the tragic one. Tragic cathar-
sis makes us look upon the greatness man is capable of even
within his finitude and thus prepares us to accept the human
condition. Comic catharsis presents us with a fleeting image
of man transcending his finitude and, if only for a brief mo-
ment, gives us the exhilarating idea that perhaps it will be
man after all who will be the victor in his struggle with a
universe bent on crushing him. In other words, tragedy gives
us a sense of human courage, comedy a sense of wild, irrational
hope. As Enid Welsford has pointed out in her discussion of
the clown as a figure in Western literature, it depends on our
general conception of human destiny how we shall look at the
clown. If death is the last fact about man, then the art of the
clown is a pathetic piece of emotional relief, a passing moment
of benign illusion, doomed to the tragic finale of all things
human. If, on the other hand, the universe is not a mindless
machine destroying all within it, if death should turn out to
be not the ultimate reality of the human phenomenon, then
the clown's magic takes on a strange new dignity. The comic
transformation now may suddenly appear as a promise of a
reality yet to come. If we are now to put this in Christian
terms, we obtain a somewhat startling perspective on the
relative importance of tragedy and comedy. This bears looking
into a little further.

A Christian understanding of human existence would re-
verse the common belief that tragedy is more profound than
comedy. On the contrary, this Christian understanding would
say it is comedy that gives us the more significant insights
into the human condition. Tragedy can never go beyond
immanence (this, incidentally, is why a Christian tragedy is
a contradiction in terms). Comedy can. More than that, in a
way strangely parallel to that of the Christian faith, comedy

214 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

overcomes the tragic perspective. From the Christian point of
view one can say that comedy, unlike tragedy, bears within it
a great secret This secret is the promise of redemption. For
redemption promises in eternity what comedy gives us in its
few moments of precarious liberation the collapse of the
walls of our imprisonment. It would not be surprising if, to
the blessed, redemption appears after the terrors of the world
as a form of comic relief. But there can be no doubt about
one tiling. There will be no tragedy in heaven by definition,
as it were. But man will remain funny for ever. If nothing
else there will be material for endless comedies in his relations
with the angels! The tragic thus shows us man in time, but
the comic may well give us an intimation of what man is and
always will be, even in eternity.

But our concern in this essay is not with heaven, so it is
probably high time that we return to our theme, which is not
the angelic but the social comedy. We would now suggest
that such a Christian understanding of the comic has direct
applicability to the perception of society. One can, obviously,
conceive of society as essentially a tragic drama. Society then
is seen as part of that inane world which bears down upon us
and which will inevitably succeed in destroying us. But if
society is conceived of as a comic drama, our social percep-
tion partakes of the secret referred to above. That is, in all
our debunking of the cardboard structures of the social world
there is a faint hint of redemption.

This sense of comedy may be illustrated by the difference
between a Christian and a revolutionary challenge to the pre-
tensions of the status quo. The revolutionary is almost al-
ways a thoroughly humorless type. He sees people as part of
structures, either those he wishes to tear down or those he
hopes to erect. Those who defend the status quo appear to
him as fools or scoundrels. Revolution is an earnest under-
taking. The revolutionary takes it and himself too with very
great seriousness* There is littie room for any comic perspec-
tive. The Christian challenge to the status quo begins by not
taking it as seriously as it takes itself. It refuses to see indi-

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND THE SOCIAL COMEDY 215

vidual human beings as incarnations of social symbols and
principles. As we have tried to show before, the Christian
challenge to society lies above all in its radical humanizing of
all social problems. This process of humanization carries with
it a comic perspective. It "unmasks" human pretensions very
much in the sense meant by Freud in his discussion of wit.
Finally,, because it lives in confrontation with God, this Chris-
tian challenge cannot take itself ultimately seriously either.
Only God is ultimately to be taken seriously. Everything
human remains less than serious by comparison. Needless to
say, this does not mean that the Christian challenge to in-
justice or cruelty will be less than serious in the sense of de-
tached amusement, comfortable readiness to forgive every-
thing, or lazy lack of commitment Yet it will be less than
serious in the sense that it will know that its own actions are
caught in the comic ambiguities of all human endeavor and
also in that it will never lose sight of the pathetic humanity
that also is a quality of one's worst enemy.

Thus at the bottom of any debunking job undertaken in a
Christian spirit is not a nihilistic guffaw but a redeeming
smile. The "unmasking" of society is undertaken on behalf
of an affirmation of man. This is done without the frantic
hopes of the revolutionary Utopian and without the misan-
thropic cynicism of the uncommitted observer. Debunking
which is really the underside of Christian prophecy may some-
times be very sharp indeed, but it is not likely to become real
bitterness. There is always an awareness that this particular
colossus staring us in the face at the moment, like all the
colossi of this world, is swallowed up in Christ's victory and
will be swept away when this victory is consummated. Noth-
ing human is ultimately dangerous, not even the most de-
termined stupidity. Thus nothing human can ultimately
keep us from the liberation of laughter.

The Christian faith bids us love our enemies. We would
suggest that an essential part of this humanly unthinkable
undertaking is to view these enemies under the aspect of the
comic. In other words, the humanizing perspective of the

2l6 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

Christian faith takes the enemy less seriously than he takes
himself, addresses him as a human being instead of as the
representative of awesome social forces, and thus may unex-
pectedly open the way for simple human communication. The
following passage from a report on Christians in the Commu-
nist zone of Germany, published in a Swiss newspaper, illus-
trates this possibility:

"And then we experienced that here and there a few of us began
to talk to half and full Marxists with love. With love that means
undiplomatically, in all frankness and freedom, yet not self-right-
eously or moralistically. And almost everywhere where that hap-
pened, we saw that the evil spirits stole away and the sea became
still. In the place of their dialectically grounded desire to liquidate
us (for the moment only rhetorically) came human respect, then
the assurance that they wouldn't do us any harm because we were
*good honest people* whom one protects and defends. Then, here
and there, something quite different occurred. Suddenly the mask
which looks so deceivingly like the real face fell, and revealed a
helpless man who sinks tinder his load of sin and guilt, and who
clings to the Christian who has treated him with a bit of love,
who hasn't lied to him like the others." 5

It goes without saying that this attitude will not always lead
to these results in the situation of facing Communist func-
tionaries. But its very possibility is a direct outcome of the
humanizing quality of the Christian challenge developed
above, a quality which includes in a very profound way the
comic perspective on the social drama. As little men put on
their terrifying masks and headgears and war rattles, and
march into the arena with solemn chants, there is always
some old lady who smiles at them, not unkindly, and suggests
that the boys go play elsewhere where they cannot hurt any-
body. We know all too well that even unimpressed grand-
mothers can be killed in the great war games of society. But
there is also a possibility that men may discover their own
humanity. This possibility is the important nexus between the
comic perspective and Christian ethics.

To be ultimately serious about society means ipso facto to

CHRISTIAN FAITH AND THE SOCIAL COMEDY 217

be caught within it. Thus even the revolutionary, who seeks to
overthrow society and build a new one on the ruins of the old,
is ultimately serious about his social involvements. Only a
conception of man which transcends society can take social
involvements with a grain of salt or with tongue in cheek.
Certainly the Christian faith is not the only such conception.
But in the Christian understanding of man and of the nature
of redemption lies an unusually fertile opportunity of gaining
distance from the social problems pressing on one at the
moment. Thus the refusal of taking society as ultimately seri-
ous (which means refusing to take it at the face value it usu-
ally puts on itself) not only is an experience of personal
liberation but also has relevance to the effort to grasp society
intellectually. To return to the general argument of this essay,
we would now say .jfcgt^jjMofar^sJfce Christian faith contains
within it a spec^cj^3^ a specific in*

terpretation of come <ty? J^^

perceptipn of sodet^It is a com-
, but still gnjgportent_O3|i^_ tfiat j. meas*
more clearly. The Christian

faith,, when it is true to itself and really is "in thcT world Jbut
not ot it/' provides cEstance^^rom society and thus creates op
poSuBStierfcTperSption. llius the Christian faith relates to
the enterprise of the social sciences not only because of its
radical challenge to social delusions and alibis. In a more
benign way, as it were, it relates to the "sociological imagina-
tion'* (Mills) by way of the comic perspective on the social
carnival. The Christian sees man as having a destiny over and
beyond society, man straddling two worlds, those two worlds
that Simone Weil called those of gravity and grace. In thus
transcending society, the Christian faith at the same time
makes it possible to see society more clearly.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer made the important distinction be-
tween ''ijltiiimte^and "penultimate" concerns in his Ethics.
The entiredomam ot social and political action, however
serious its involvements may often be, will always be "penul-
timate" in the Christian economy. Thus the Christian will

21 8 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

engage himself in action passionately, but he will not allow
his commitment to blind him to the comic aspects of his
situation. He will deal with men without forgetting that they
were children not so long ago. He will protest against injustice,
but he will not absolutize this protest or make it the basis of
his existence. He will build for the future, but he will do so
in full awareness of the precariousness of all human construc-
tion on the quicksands of history. Above all, he will remem-
ber that the central message of the Christian faith is not a
call to struggle but a call to joy.

We quite miss the point if we only laugh at Don Quixote
because he rides against windmills. The point is that, in the
magic of the Quixotic universe, the windmills really cease to
be windmills and are metamorphosed into a promise of glory.
Of course, we know that "in this aeon," as the New Testa-
ment puts it, the ride of Don Quixote ends in a sad return to
what we take for granted as reality. But the Christian faith
means looking toward the aeon that is to come. The magic
moment of comedy foreshadows this aeon, when redemption
becomes the one overpowering reality of the universe. Chris-
tian faith, just because it strives for clear perception, cannot
look at Don Quixote through the eyes of Sancho Panza. The
windmills of the Quixotic attack are the battlements of
the New Jerusalem, as yet dimly seen on the horizon. But it
is toward this horizon that the human caravan is moving.
Don Quixote rides toward the dawn of Easter morning.

12. "You Are the Man'

AN EXEGETICAI- POSTSCRIPT

"And the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to
him, 'There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the
other poor. The rich man had very many flocks and herds; but
the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had
bought. And he brought it up, and it grew up with him and
with his children; it used to eat of his morsel, and drink from his
cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. Now
there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take
one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had
come to him, but he took the poor man's lamb, and prepared it
for the man who had come to him/ Then David's anger was
greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, *As the
Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; and he shall
restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because
he had no pity/ Nathan said to David, Tfou are the man/"

(II Sam. 12:1-7 RSV)

There is no intention here of ending this essay with a sermon.
The writer has no authority to preach and every reason to
remain in a nonkerygmatic posture. Having come to the end
of the argument, however, it is very desirable to illustrate
at least by one specific example how this argument relates
itself directly to the Biblical witness. The above passage from
the Old Testament is taken as a very dramatic illustration of
what we would like to suggest here.

The passage we have quoted directly ought to be read in
the larger context of this Biblical narrative. Most people (if
only thanks to Hollywood! ) will recognize this larger context
as the story of David's adultery with Bathsheba and the sub-
sequent murder of Uriah, Bathsheba's husband. Those not

22O THE FRECARIOITS VISION

familiar with the story ought to begin reading it at the be-
ginning and then read on beyond the incident of David's
encounter with Nathan (II Sam. 11 to II Sam. 12:25), other-
wise our considerations here will make little sense. But it
might be in order to at least summarize the entire story and
relate it to the incident in the quotation.

In the context of the Biblical narrative it might be imagined
that the episode occurred not too long after David had es-
tablished himself as king in Jerusalem. His days of guerrilla
warfare in the hills were over and he could settle down to being
a comfortable if not exactly magnificent potentate. The parti-
san chief now safely established in power, perhaps getting a
little flabby around the middle, preferring to reminisce about
past heroics than to engage in new ones in the presentthe
picture is a familiar one and not without its comic aspect. We
may find traces of irony right at the beginning of the story,
which opens, "In the spring of the year, the time when kings
go forth to battle/* There were, indeed, battles going on.
David's troops, under the command of Joab (a partisan type
of truly Macedonian ferocity), had crossed the Jordan and
were besieging Rabbah (what is now Amman), the Ammon-
ite city. However, this bellicose season finds David enjoying
a lazy Mediterranean siesta on the roof of his palace in
Jerusalem "It happened, late one afternoon,, when David
arose from his couch and was walking upon the roof of the
king's house'* an ideal setting for erotic reconnaissance. And
indeed 'lie saw from the roof a woman bathing" after which
the, again, hot-bloodedly Mediterranean course of events could
well be described in the Spanish proverb "Hay que ser horn-
bre" (of which a fairly castrated Anglo-Saxon translation
might be "Boys will be boys'* except that David was certainly
no boy and very much what the Spanish would call hombre!}.

Bathsheba came to join the royal couch, in the best tradition
of sloe-eyed oriental docility, and promptly became pregnant.
Since her husband, Uriah the Hittite (that is, a foreigner
residing among the Hebrews a fact which, in terms of Near
Eastern concepts of hospitality, made David's adultery even

"YOU ARE THE MAN** 221

more serious) was out fighting with JoaVs troops, she had
every reason for anxiety there seemed no way of attributing
paternity to Uriah, and the Hebrew penalty for an adulterous
woman was death. The following part of the story is pure
burlesque. David brings Uriah back from the front on a three-
day pass, doing everything but tuck him into bed with Bath-
sheba, but Uriah remains steadfast in his adherence to the
tabu against sexual intercourse during times of war. The
annoying martinet eats and drinks at the king's table to his
heart's delight, even becomes drunk in the most soldierly
fashion but he "did not go down to his house/'

It is certainly possible that to this point David's actions
were motivated by the desire to settle the matter discreetly
and without harming anyone. There is no evidence of any
great feeling for Bathsheba on the part of David, but we might
even imagine that he strongly wished to protect her as well as
himself against the consequences of the rendezvous. It is also
not difficult to imagine David's rising annoyance at Uriah's
offensive virtuousness. When the Hittite returned to the front
without having so much as looked in the direction of his nup-
tial bliss, David the sensible man of the world became David
the king in the full bloodthirsty meaning that this title had in
those days. He sends word to Joab to assign Uriah to the
most dangerous place in the battle line and to make sure that
he is killed there by the enemy. The plot succeeds and the
inconvenient husband lies dead before the walls of RabbaK
When Joab informs David of what happened, the latter sends
a comforting message "Do not let this matter trouble you,
for the sword devours now one and now another" or, to use
contemporary GI language, "This is the way the ball bounces,"
Upon hearing the same news, Bathsheba dutifully mourns for
her husband (probably for the prescribed period of seven
days) and then moves without further ado into the royal
harem. As far as the mores of the period were concerned,
the whole matter had been settled in a very satisfactory and
even humane manner (after all, David could have killed

222 THE PRECARIOUS VISION

Uriah right away he had shown admirable scruples all through
the affair! ) .

It was a general characteristic of Yahweh that He did not
let well enough alone, as any other sensible god would do, but
sent His thoroughly unpleasant emissaries to harass people
who were neither better nor worse than anyone else, and who
were simply trying to do their best in difficult circumstances.
Just as the whole episode had been safely settled., with Bath-
sheba respectably incorporated in David's seraglio and a son
just having been born to the couple, Nathan makes his appear-
ance with the nasty story quoted at the opening of this chap-
ter. The fact that David did not suspect Nathan's intention
earlier in the interview might be an indication of how far
from his mind the whole affair was by now. On the other
hand, David being also the highest judge of the land, it might
well be that Nathan frequently came to him with such stories.
We know the rest of the story. David the judicial authority
becomes David the one who is judged. After Nathan's
scorching indictment David acknowledges his sin and repents.
Nathan announces God's forgiveness to him but not without
David having to bear some of the consequences of his act.
The child born to Bathsheba dies. And Nathan's curse that
"the sword shall never depart from your house" becomes
sadly fulfilled in the fate of David's sons Amnon, Absalom,
and Adonifah.

The whole story debunks David's royal stature in a double
way. The first debunking is the indirect one of irony. The
second debunking is the very direct one of judgment. Both
make the king David disappear and the man David take his
place.

There is high comedy in the bedroom farce with which the
story opens. We would suggest once more that this is the
comedy inherent in human sexuality and coming to the fore
most drastically when there are very grandiose pretensions.
Immediately before the beginning of the Bathsheba story the
Biblical writer gives another glowing account of David's vic-
tories and the glory coming from them on the people of

"YOU ARE THE MAN" 223

Israel. There is a profound discrepancy between David the
heroic king and empire-builder and David the Peeping Tom
and seducer. And this discrepancy sharply humanizes the
situation. The effect of this can certainly be seen if one simply
reads the story in a modern inood, as it were. But the effect
becomes much more telling if one tries to put oneself back
mentally into an age when kings were gods and when royal
historians vied with each other to remove from the subjects
of their writing every vestige of human weakness. The Old
Testament repeatedly astonishes us by the audacity of its
writers in describing the great heroes of their own people.
And even if in our story the writer does not dare to express
his own disapproval of David (who, by the time the account
was written down in its present form, must have been more
sacrosanct to every Hebrew grade-school pupil than George
Washington would be to an American one today), he cannot
refrain from writing objectively about his hero's deed, "But
the thing that David had done displeased the Lord/' One has
to see this sentence against a background of magnificent epics
and panegyrics to great kings of the ancient Mediterranean
world to grasp its import fully.

David's royal pretensions are debunked comically before
they are debunked in judgment. We see David, the erstwhile
wholesale collector of Philistine foreskins^ in a full-scale por-
trait of a not-so-young lecher leering over the battlements of
his castle. We see him inquiring about the object of his volup-
tuous peeping like any Don Juan of the bazaars. We then see
him, the great king, cast into fits of anxiety by the woman's
laconic message "I am with child/* We see him reduced to
organizing the buffoonish banquet for Uriah, an underling in
his army and a foreigner to boot the Icing of Israel trying to
play pimp to one of his servants on behalf of the latter's own
wife. And all this degrading game of hanky-panky turns out to
have been in vain as Uriah, the steadfast and (we may as-
sume) superstitious soldier, returns to the front, his wartime
economy of chastity as intact as when he came. We don't
know very much about the Hebrews' sense of humor, but it is

224 roE PRECARIOUS VISION

perhaps not too much to say that he who will not listen to the
quiet voice of irony will find himself deafened by the thunder-
ous address of judgment. The irony, which in our story is but
subtly implied, gives way to the direct, explicit account of
judgment. The bedroom farce becomes a tale of murder and
of the cursing of generations.

The brief story is, of course, full of deceptions, most of
them perpetrated by Pavid. But more important, from our
point of view, are the deceptions which David perpetrates on
himself and which afford him alibis for his actions. We would
suggest that there are, at the least, three layers of such decep-
tion in the story. The first one chronologically is probably
the deception of sensible realism (as David might have called
it to himself). This might well begin with the self-satisfied
assertion that, after all, it is not David's fault that he has come
into the world with such lustful loins (or, to put it in modern
terms, Casanova did not order his libido) or that beautiful
Hebrew women insist on talcing baths in locations where he is
forced to observe them. And, the thing having happened,
every sensible man could only try to cover up his tracks as
discreetly as possible. It may also be assumed that David told
himself, quite sincerely, that he had to do all these things in
order to protect Bathsheba, or perhaps even to preserve the
ban ton of the court. The effect of these thoughts is that what
was a moral issue now becomes one of social engineering.
Regrettably, David failed absurdly as a social engineer. As
social engineers are wont to do when this happens, he found
that the next realistic step involved murder.

The second deception is that of the logic of war. David the
seducer becomes David the military leader. He gives orders to
Joab to let Uriah be killed in battle. It is worth noting that
he does not order Joab to kill Uriah directly. From everything
we know about Joab there is little reason to think that such an
order would have dismayed the latter in any way. We may
assume safely that this fiction was concocted for the benefit of
David himself rather than that of Joab. The fiction, of course,
was that David did not kill Uriah the Ammonites did. We

AKE THE MAN" 225

have here, In capsule form,, the essence of bad faith as we
have discussed it throughout this essay. Although we do not
know this from the Biblical account, It is quite possible that
David had prepared some additional rationalizations as to
why Uriah had to be placed in a particularly exposed position
of the battle line. Perhaps he even convinced himself that the
Hittite's loyalty to the Hebrew cause was in question and that
he might even be an Ammonite agent. Be this as it may, we
are once more on safe ground if we assume that David's mes-
sage of encouragement to Joab after the murder of Uriah was,
again, designed to comfort David himself. Joab had probably
forgotten the whole episode as soon as it was over. He needed
no encouragement David did* And the way David comforted
himself is the way military leaders have comforted them-
selves since times immemorial for the blood which they them-
selves have shed "the sword devours now one and now an-
other" "C'est la guerre" and ultimately this means, of
course, "Don't blame me blame the war!" Within this de-
ception of the logic of war David actually has two alibis for
the murder. He can say that the Ammonites killed Uriah.
He can also say that the war killed him. What is important
is that David did not kill him.

The third deception, which is not explicitly stated but
which we can also assume, is that of David's royal prerogatives.
It would be most surprising, in that age and in that part of the
world, if somewhere along this chain of events David had not
drawn himself up before his conscience and said bravely, "I
am the king/* And who dares blame the king? Is It not sacri-
lege in itself to apply to the king the standards one applies to
other men? David was probably too pious a follower of Yah-
weh to include in this alibi some notion of his own divinity.
But, comparing his own conduct with that of neighboring col-
leagues in kingship, he might well have comforted himself
with the thought that his own interpretation of royal prerog-
atives was straight bedouin democracy compared with theirs.
After all, compared with the sacred incest, the human sacri-
fices, the forced labor of hordes of slaves surely this whole

226 THE FRECAiaOUS VISION

story about Bathsheba and her tiresome husband was but a
peccadillo for one who could call himself king! What is more,
anyone knowing anything about politics must realize that he
had no choice, once the confounded man insisted on staying
away from that woman's bed. The kingdom not only was
surrounded by enemies from without but was shaky enough
from within as well. The slightest sign of weakness in Jeru-
salem might create an excuse for the quarrelsome Hebrew
tribes to go their own ways as before. No, it is clear that David
had no choice. To be king sometimes means the duty to do
unpleasant things. The murder of Uriah was not just the re-
moval of a sexual rival (and perhaps not that at all it is quite
possible that, after one bite into the forbidden fruit, David
would have been all too happy to leave the lady to her rightful
spouse!), the sordid conclusion of an adulterous escapade. No,
the interests of the kingdom demanded Uriah's liquidation.
His death was a necessity of raison (Tetat. Indeed, it would be
grossly misleading to say that David caused the man to be
Mlled. The king, Yahweh's anointed shepherd over Israel,
had given an order. Uriah's death was but a sacrificial offering
"before this dread sovereignty. Posterity would understand.

As God's judgment confronts David in the person of Na-
than, these layers of deception and excuse are cut through with
one terrible stroke. David is not standing now before his mirror
or before that other mirror that kings have in the devotion of
men like Joab. He is standing before truth itself. And the truth
is quite simple, after all the rationalizations "You have smit-
ten Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife
to be your wife, and have slain him with the sword of the
Ammonites." The truth always appears simple after one
emerges from the welter of rationalizations. There is no dis-
cussion now of David's noble motives in seeking to protect
Bathsheba and being humane about the whole thing. There
is no talk of war and its hazards. The Ammonites, indeed, are
mentioned but only to make perfectly clear that the Am-
monite sword that killed Uriah was morally held by the hand
of David. And there is very strong mention of David's king-

"YOU ARE THE MAN" 22y

ship but as an additional condemnation, not an excuse: "I
anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you out of the
hand of Saul. . . . Why have you despised the word of the
Lord, to do what is evil in his sight?"

It is hardly necessary to stress the irony of Nathan's ap-
proach, the story told to the highest judge of Israel and in-
ducing that same judge to condemn himself as one who
"deserves to die" (the Hebrew phrase is even more deadly
the offending man is called by David a "son of death"). We
would only stress the double weight of Nathan's climactic
words to David "You are the man." We cannot know how
Nathan pronounced this terrible sentence, but there are two
emphases that are possible. "You are the man" not the
Ammonites, not Joab, not the imaginary scoundrel of Nathan's
story "You, David you, the murderer." But also another
emphasis is possible: "You are the man" not the king, not
Yahweh's anointed, not the great victor over IsraeFs enemies,
but, "You, David a man like any other and worse than any
other a man like the cheap, cruel, repulsive character whom
you have just condemned yourself in fact, a man who is a
'son of death/ "

In reading this story it is important, of course, not to pro-
ject into it the moral ideas and outrages of our own time.
The story is found in a part of the Old Testament where each
page drips with blood. We cannot imagine that David's con-
science reacted to violence and bloodshed in the way a con-
science would whose conception of God's will has been shaped
by the New Testament as well as the Old. Perhaps it is es-
pecially important not to infect into the story the outrages of a
Puritan sexual ethic. It is well to keep in mind that nowhere
in this whole story is there the slightest hint of anything we
might call "love" today and that the background of the story
is not some sort of cozily bourgeois monogamy but an Orien-
tal harem with many wives, concubines, and slaves, the most
brutal exploitation of which was kept in bounds not so much
by what we would today call ethics but by ferocious and
horrifying tabus. All the more remarkable is what emerges

228 THE PHECASIOtJS VISION

clearly as the essence of David's sin. For what was the deepest
sin in Nathan's story, the sin of the rich man who took away
the poor man's lamb for his own feast? David himself charac-
terized the sin, which was also his own "he had no pity/'

David's sin is pitilessness. It is the sacrifice of what is dearest
in another's life for the routine needs of one's own existence.
Bathsheba's virtue and safety are sacrificed to David's momen-
tary lust, just as the poor man's lamb is sacrificed for the
miserly ostentatiousness of his rich oppressor. And Uriah's life
is sacrificed for the temporary exigencies of royal prestige and
raison dfetat. What is life or death to one man becomes a
matter of convenience or inconvenience to another. And so
the life of Caryl Chessman was spared for the convenience of
President Eisenhower's trip to South America. When there
was no more danger of the President being even slightly in-
convenienced by Chessman's death, the way was open for the
gas chamber. With all the relativities of time and history, the
way is not so long from the walls of Rabbah to those of San
Quentin. And the voice of God's judgment remains the same
now as then.

The story does not end with Nathan's condemnation of
David. David acknowledges the odious identification with the
rich man in Nathan's story. DavM repents and he is forgiven.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer once referred to David as a shadow of
Christ in the Old Testament. The story of David's sin is not
only one of judgment but also one of grace. What concerns us
most, however, is the relationship of both judgment and
grace to the process of David's perception of himself. The
encounter with God brushes aside all the pet illusions with
which men hide themselves from their own conscience. Noth-
ing but the truth is good enough then. As men confront God's
address they also perceive themselves in a new that is, a more
truthful way.

We would venture to argue one more time that in this
"You are the man" of our story lies the essence of that Chris-
tian humanism of which we have spoken before. And this
Christian humanism involves not only moral imperatives but

"YOU AEE THE MAN"

also perception. It means to see men as men and to address
them as such. It means to ground all moral imperatives in
men and not in institutionalized fictions. It means to see
through the deceptions of social structure, through the web
o bad faith and rationalization. There is a very great liberation
in acquiring such perception, though even this liberation
pales compared with that which conies from God's eternal
recognition of ourselves as men created and men redeemed
as Nathan said to David, "The Lord also has put away
your sin; you shall not die/'

Notes

NOTES FOR PART I

Chapter i

1. C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (New York, Oxford
University Press, 1960), pp. 5 L

2. Cf. Alfred Schuetz, "The Stranger An Essay in Social Psy-
chology," American Journal of Sociology, XLIX (1944), pp. 499 ff,

3. Arthur Koestler, Arrival and Departure (New York, The Macmillan
Co., 1944), PP- *77 L

Chapter 2

1 . In formulating these propositions I have relied mainly on the con-
ceptual apparatus of role theory and reference-group theory, as com-
monly used in American social psychology (vide Chapter 3), but
am also very much indebted to the teaching of Alfred Schuetz.

2. In formulating this psychoanalytic interpretation of Lutheranism
I have made use of various ideas of Erich Fromm's. It may be
evident from the rest of this essay that I consider this interpretation
to have BO validity whatever.

3. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago, University of Chicago
Press, 1957), II, p. 105 (footnote). Italics mine.

4. Martin J. Heinecken, God in the Space Age (Philadelphia, The
John C. Winston Company, 1959), p. 142.

Chapter 3

1. Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly (Princeton, Princeton
University Press, 1941), p. 37.

2. William fames, The Principles of Psychology (New York, Henry
Holt & Co., Inc., 1893), t P- 2 94-

3. A very good summary of role theory, with a bibliographical guide,
may be found in Theodore R. Sarbin, "Role Theory," in Gardner
Lindzey, Handbook of Social Psychology (Cambridge, Mass.,
Addison-Wesky Publishing Company, Inc., 1954), I, pp. 223 fL

NOTES 231

For a critical discussion vide L. J. Neiman and J. W. Hughes, "The
Problem of the Concept of Role/* Social Forces, 1951 130, pp. 141 ff.

4. Charles H. Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order (New
York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1902), esp, cc. V- VI.

5. George H. Mead, Mind, Self and Society (Chicago, University of
Chicago Press, 1934), esp. c. III. For an excellent critical discussion
vide Maurice Natanson, The Social Dynamics of George H. Mead
(Washington, Public Affairs Press, 1956).

6. A comparison of the following commonly used textbooks of social
psychology, written from quite different points of view and over a
period of fifteen years, may be illuminating in this connection: G.
W. Allport, Personality A Psychological Interpretation (New
York, Henry Holt & Co., 1937) ; K. Young, Social Psychology (New
York, Arthur C. Croft Publications, 1944); T. M. Newcomb,
Social Psychology (New York, The Dryden Press, Inc., 1950); S. A.
Asch, Social Psychology (New York, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1952);
E. L. Hartley and R. E. Hartley, Fundamentals of Social Psychology
(New York, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1952),

7. C/. Natanson, op. tit., pp. 3 f.

8. Possibly the most comprehensive application of role theory to the
analysis of institutions may be found in Hans Gerth and C. Wright
Mills, Character and Social Structure (New York, Harcourt, Brace
& Co., 1953).

9. Cf. esp. Talcott Parsons, The Social System (Glencoe, 111., The
Free Press, 1951).

10. Ralph Linton, The Study of Man (New York, Appleton-Centuiy,
Inc., 1936) , esp. c. VIII; ibid., The Cultural Background of Person-
ality, (New York, Appleton-Century, Inc., 1945).

n. Melville J. Herskovits, Man and His Works (New York, Alfred A.
Knopf, Inc., 1952), pp. 432.

12. Harry Stack Sullivan, The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry (New
York, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1953) . It maybe instructive
to see the similarities (terminology apart) between this and a work
radically different from it in its theoretical assumptions N. E.
Miller and J. Dollard, Social Learning and Imitation (New Haven,
Yale University Press, 1941 ) . It appears that both a radical behavior-
ism and a sociologically modified psychoanalytic interpretation
come up with views of socialization, that can quite easily be put in
Mead's concepts.

13. Cf, two recent brilliant essays in social psychology Erving Goff-
man, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City,
N.Y., Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1959); Anselm L. Strauss,
Minors and Masks (Glencoe, I1L, The Free Press, 1959).

232 NOTES

14. Cf. the brief (and possibly still the best) introduction into the
problematic of the sociology of knowledge in Robert K. Merton,
Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, I1L, The Free Press,
1957), cc. XII and XIII; also, ibid., in Georges Gurvitch (ed.),
Twentieth Century Sociology (New York, Philosophical Library,
Inc., 1945), c. XIII.

15. C/. Carlo Antoni, From History to Sociology (Detroit, Wayne
State University Press, 1959).

16. C/. Hans Earth, Wahrheit und Ideologic (Zurich, Manesse, 1945).

17. Max Scheler, Versuch einer Souologie des Wissens (Munich,
Duncker & Humblot, 1924); ibid., Die Wissensformen und die
Gesettschaft (Leipzig, Neue-Geist-Verlag, 1926).

18. Cf. esp. Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (London, Routiedge
& Kegan Paul, 1936); ifefdL, Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge,
ed. Paul Kecskemeti (New York, Oxford University Press, 1952).

19. For a recent presentation of the field cf. W. Stark, The Sociology
of Knowledge (Glencoe, 111., The Free Press, 1958).

20. H, H. Hyman, "The Psychology of Status/' Archives of Psychology,
XXXVIII (1942): 15. For good presentations of the problematic
of reference-group theory cf . M. Sherif, "The Concept of Reference
Groups in Human Relations," in M. Sherif and M. O. Wilson
(eds.), Group Relations at the Crossroads (New York, Harper &
Brothers,, 1953), pp. 203 ff; also, Merton, op, cat, cc. VIII-4X. It
is interesting that both reference-group theory and sociology of
knowledge are treated in the last-named work, with apparently
no feeling on the part of the author that the two subjects belong
together.

21. Tamotsu Shibutani, "Reference Groups as Perspectives," American
Journal of Sociology, LX (1955), pp. 562 f.

22. Ibid., p. 563.

23. For a very good discussion of this cf* Asch, op. eft,, pp. 450 ff.

24. Ibid., pp. 451 ff*

25. Cf. J. A. M. Meerloo, The Rape of the Mind (New York, The
World Publishing Co., 1956); also, William Sargant, Battle for
the Mind (Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday & Company, Inc.,

1957)-

26. Supra, pp. 20 f*

27. Cf. Everett C. Hughes, Men and Their Work (Glencoe, 111., The
Free Press, 1958) . Most of the studies of Hughes and his associates
are scattered in the issues of the American Journal of Sociology;
cf. an entire issue devoted to these LVII (1952), pp. 423 fL
Also cf. the section entitled "The Terror and Therapy of Work,"
in M. R. Stein, A. J. Vidich, and D. M. White (eds.), Identity
and Anxiety (Glencoe, 111., The Free Press, 1960), pp. 181 ff.

NOTES 233

One of the best studies of an occupational ideology is F. X.
Sutton e.ct., The American Bitsiness Creed (Cambridge, Mass.,
Harvard University Press, 1956).

28. Cf. H. S. Becker and J. W. Carper, "The Development of Identi-
fication with an Occupation/* American Journal of Sociology?
LXI (1956), pp. 289 ff.

29. S. K. Weinberg and H. Arond, "The Occupational Culture of the
Boxer," American Journal of Sociology, LVII (1952), p. 463.

30. Hughes, op. tit., p. 117.

31. Mills, op. tit., pp. 25 ff. Cf. ibid*, "The Professional Ideology of
Social Pathologists," American Journal of Sociology, XLIX

(*943) PP* l6 5 ff -

32. Gunnar Myrdal, The Political Element in the Development of

Economic Theory (1929), discussed in Stark, op* cit. 9 pp. 55 ff.

33. Erasmus, loc. tit.

Chapter 4

1. Cf. Thorstein Veblen, "The Intellectual Pre-Eminence of Jews
in Modern Europe/' In Max Lerner (ed.), The Portable Veblen
(New York, The Viking Press, Inc., 1948), pp. 467 ff; also, Georg
Simmel, "The Stranger/' in Kurt Wolff (ed.) 7 The Sociology of
Georg Simmel (Glencoe, 111., The Free Press, 1950), pp. 402 ff.

2. Wolff, op. tit., pp. 40 ff. Also, cf. J. Huizinga, Homo Ludens
(paperback edition by Beacon Press),

3. Wolff,, op. tit*, pp. 49 L Italics mine,

4. Cf . Huizinga, op. tit., p. 6.

5. Gamesmanship, Lifemanship and One-Upmanship (all published
in the United States by Henry Holt & Co., Inc. ) ,

6. Essays, III .-5 (Trechmann translation, Oxford University Press, II,

P- 337>

7. Op. tit., pp. 208 ff.

8. On the law as a game cf. Huizinga,, op. tit., pp. 76 ff.

9. The study in question was Floyd Hunter, Top Leadership, U.S.A.
(Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1959) .

10. This thought was once expressed to me by Noel Perrin, of
Dartmouth College, He put it much better than I have here, but
this was the gist of it.

Chapter 5

1. Our argument here is influenced by the discussion of nihilism
in Sirnone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity (New York,
Philosophical Library, Inc., 1948), pp. 57 ff.

2. Cf. Sartre, Being and Nothingness (New York, Philosophical
Library, Inc., 1956), pp. 47 ff.

NOTES

3. Cf. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, (Tuebingen, Neomarius, 1949),
pp. 126 ff.

4. The Observer, July i, 1952, quoted in Arthur Koestler, Reflections
on Hanging (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1957), pp. 3 L

5. Heidegger, op. cit. 9 pp. 252 ff.

6. On the differences between Heidegger's and Sartre's approach to
the philosophy of death cf. Maurice Natanson, "Death and Situa-
tion," The American Imago, 16:4 (Winter 1959), pp. 447 ff.

NOTES FOR PART II

Chapter 6

1. Cf. Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious
Life (Glencoe, 111., The Free Press, 1947); H. H - Gerth and G - W -
Mills, From Max Weber (New York, Oxford University Press,
1958), part III; Max Weber Gesammelte Aufsaetze zur Religions-
soziologie (Tuebingen, J. C. B. Mohr, 1947). Of the last, most
of the works have now been translated into English. The most
famous of these is The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
(London, George Allen & Unwin, 1930). A good notion of the
Marxist approach can be obtained from the anthology Marx and
Engels on Religion (Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing
House, 1957).

2. Cf. Bronislaw Malinowski, The Foundations of Faith and Morals
(London, Oxford University Press, 1936); ibid., Magic Science
and Religion (Glencoe, 111., The Free Press, 1948); William J.
Goode, Religion among the Primitives (Glencoe, 111., The Free
Press, 1951); Talcott Parsons, The Social System (Glencoe, 111.,
The Free Press, 1951), part VIII; Robin M. Williams, Jr., Amer-
ican Society (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1954), pp. 304 ff.;
J. Milton Yinger, Refigfoi^ Society and the Individual (New
York, The Macmillan Co,, 1957).

3. For a critique of Durkheim's position cf. Malinowski, Mdgic,
Science and Religion, pp. 37 ff.

4. Durkheim's French phrase could be translated as either "collective
conscience*' or "collective consciousness/' but the latter translation
is bound to be misleading. Durkheim did not hold a theory of a
"group soul/* The collectivity which interested him is a moral not
a metaphysical fact.

5. E. A. Ross, Social Control (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1901 ) .

6. Supra, footnote i.

7. Gerth and Mills, op. eft., pp. 78 ff., 271; also, Max Weber, The

NOTES 235

Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York, Oxford
University Press, 1947), pp. 124 ff., 130 ff., 324 ff.

8. Gerth and Mills, op. cit., p. 274 ff v 358 ff.

9. Yinger, op. ciL, p. 65.

10. Will Herberg, Protestant-Catholic-Jew (Garden City, N.Y.,
Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1955), pp. 279 f.

11. Albert Camus, ''Reflections on the Guillotine/ 7 Evergreen Review,
No. 12.

12. Jacob J. Vellenga, "Is Capital Punishment Wrong?*', Christianity
Today, October 12, 1959, p. 9.

13. Arthur Koestler, Reflections on Hanging (New York, The
Macinillan Co., 1957), P- 1 ^9-

14. Ibid., p. 166.

15. Ibid., p. 41.

16. Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), Vol. 198, No. 115, July 10,
1956 (London, Her Majesty's Stationery Office). It may be added
that in tie United States, with the exception of the so-called
"peace churches," the attitude of Protestant churches toward the
issue has been largely one of indifference, although some national
denominations have recently passed resolutions in favor of aboli-
tion.

17* A. Davis, B. G. Gardner and M. R. Gardner, Deep South
(Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1941), pp. 527 ff.

18. Ibid., p. 533.

19. From Waldo W. Burchard, "Role Conflicts of Military
Chaplains/* American Sociological Review, October 19 54,
pp. 528 ff.

20. Arthur Vidich and Joseph Bensman, Small Tow* in Mass Society
(Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1958),

31. Cf. J. R. Seeley, R. A. Sim and E. W. Loosley, Crestwood Heights
(New York, Basic Books, Inc., 1956); William EL Whyte, Jr.,
The Organization Man (New York, Simon and Schuster, Inc.,
1956); David Riesinan, "The Suburban Sadness," in William M.
Dobriner (ed.), The Suburban Community (New York, G. P.
Putnam's Sons, 1958).

22. Malinowski, Mdgzc, Science and Religion, pp. 29 ff.

23. W. Lloyd Warner, The Living and the Dead (New Haven, Yale
University Press, 1959)-

Chapter 8

i. Cf, Albert Camus, The Rebel (New York, Vintage Books, Inc.,
1956). For a tendentious but in part illuminating discussion cf*
Henri de Lubac, The Drama of Atheist Humanism (New York,
Sheed & Ward, 1950).

236 NOTES

2. Cf. de Liabac, op. dt. r pp. 161 ff; Nicholas Berdyaev, Dostoievky
(New York, Sheed & Ward, 1934);

religwuxdeDostoievski (Paris, Editions du Seoil, 1947).

3. B" R. Redman (ed.), The Portable Voltaire (New York, The
Viking Press, Inc., 1949), p. 566,

4. Simone de Beauvoir, The Marquis de Sade (New York, Grove
Press, 1953),?. 5 6 -

5. Camus, op. czt., p. 56.

6. The most consistent elaboration of this position in twentieth-
century philosophical ethics is probably that of Nicolai Hartmann.
Cf. his Ethik (1926).

y. Karl Jaspers, Venwnft und Widervenwnft in unserer Zeit
(Munich, Piper, 1950), p. 28. It is not impossible that a similarly
masochistic movement underlies Dostoyevsky's submission to
throne and altar during his years of imprisonment; cf. his bi-
ography by Avrahm Yarmolinsky Dostoevsky (New York,
Criterion Books, Inc., 1957).

8. Cf. my article "Camus, Bonhoeffer and the World Come of Age/*
The Christum Century, April 8 and 15, 1959.

9. Cf. Camus, op. tit., pp. 294 ff,

NOTES FOR PART III

Chapter 9

1. Cf. esp. Karl Barth, Die kirchliche Dogmatik (Zollikon-Zuerich,
Evangelischer Verlag, 1945 ), vol. 1/2, pp. 304 ff.

2. Cf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics (London, S. C. M. Press, 1955);
ibid* f Prisoner for God (New York, The Macmillan Co., 1954).

3. Cf. Simone Weil, Waiting for God (New York, G. P. Putnam's
Sons, 1951); ibid., Gravity and Grace (New York, G. P. Putnam's
Sons, 1952).

4. Cf. Walter Lowrie (ed.), Kierkegaard's Attack Upon "Chris-
tendom" (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1944).

5. Cf. Barth, foe. tit.; also, Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros
(Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1953).

6. Cf. Eric Voegelin, Israel and Revelation (Louisiana State Uni-
versity Press, 1956), esp. Part 2.

7. Lowrie, op. dt. f p. 59,

8. Supra, pp. 15 ff.

9. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (New York,
Harper & Brothers, 1957), P- xx * x - Earth's essay was printed as an
introduction to this English edition.

NOTES 237

10* Bonhoeffer, Prisoner for God, p. 124.

11. Ibid., pp. 146 f.

12. C/. my article "The Second Children's Crusade, The Christian
Century, December 2, 1959.

13. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
(London, George Allen & Unwin, 1948), p. 105.

14. Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe*
111., The Free Press, 1949).

15. Weil, Waiting for God, p. 145.

16. Ibid., Gravity and Grace, p. 168.

17. Karl Kraus, Widerschein der Fackel (Munich, Koesel-Verlag,
1956), p. 425. My translation,

18. Some of these thoughts have been expressed to me by Eberhard
Mueller, of the Evangelical Academy Bad Boll in Germany. The
concept of dialogue (Gespraech) with the world employed at
Bad Boll and other European laymen's institutes is one of the
most interesting efforts by Christians in our time to lake a non-
kerygmatic posture in the communication of their faith. Cf.
Eberhard Mueller, Die Welt ist anders geworden (Hamburg,
Furche-Verlag, 1955); H. R. Mueller-Schwefe, Die Stunde des
Gespraechs (Hamburg, Furche-Verlag, 1956); also, Franklin H.
Littell, "On the Theology of Discussion/* unpublished manu-
script read at the conference of the European laymen's institutes
at Bi&vres, France, in the summer of 1959.

Chapter 10

1. I. F. Hapgood (ed.), Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-
Catholic Apostolic Church (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co.,
1906), p. 227.

2. C/. Emil Brunner, The Divine Imperative (Philadelphia, The
Westminster Press, 1943).

3. Lillian Smith, Killers of the Dream (New York, W. W. Norton &
Company, 1949), p. 91.

4. D. S. Bailey (ed.), Sexual Offenders and Social Punishment
(London, Church Information Board, 1956), p. 75.

5. Cf., for example, Bronislaw Malinowski, The Sexual Life of
Savages (New York, Halcyon House, 1929); or, Margaret Mead,
Male and Fenude (New York, Mentor Books, 1955) -

6. Cf. Morris Ploscowe, Sex and the Law (New York, Prentice-Hall*
Inc., 1951).

7. The following paragraphs are taken from an unpublished report
of mine on two seminars on the human and ethical problems of
mass communications held at the Hartford Seminary Foundation
during the academic year 1959-60.

238 NOTES

8. Cf. the brochure Signs of Renewed, a summary of these experi-
ments published by the World Council of Churches.

9. C/. my article "Evangelical Academies in America?" in Chris-
tianity and Crisis, March 31, 1958.

10. C/. Peter Hammond, The Waters of Mar ah (London, Rockliff,
1956).

11. Seraphim Papakosta, Eusebius Matthopoulos (London, SJP.CJC,

1 939)PP- lo6f -
Chapter 1 1

1. Sigmund Freud, "Wit and Its Relations to the Unconscious/*
in A. A. Brill (ed.) > The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud (New
York, Modem Library, Inc., 1938).

2. Henri Bergson, "Laughter," in W. Sypher (ed.), Comedy
(Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1956).

3. C/. Francis Jeanson, Signification humaine du rire (Paris, Editions
du Seuil, 1950).

4* Bergson, loc. tit., p. 123.

5. Charles C, West, Communism and the Theologians (London,
S, C. M. Press, 1958), p. 385.

PHOTO BY DEFORD DECHERT

PETER L. BERGER was born In Vienna
and 'Came to this country In his late teens.
He has a Master's and a Doctors degree in
Sociology from the New School for Social
Research in New York. After two years in
the United States Army, he taught at the
University of Georgia and the University
of North Carolina. He is now an Assistant
Professor in Social Ethics at the Hartford
Seminary Foundation. Mr. Berger writes
regularly for professional journals in the
fields of the social sciences and religion,
and is the author of THE NOISE OF
SOLEMN ASSEMBLIES.

Printed in the U.S.A.

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